ARCHAEOLOGY IS RUBBISH!
By looking at a rubbish bin we can look at layers of time like an archaeologist.
Imagine a bin that has filled up over time with lots of rubbish.
If we cut the side of the bin away to have a look at the layers that have built
up, we would see that the deeper down the bin we look, the older the rubbish.
Archaeologists do this when they excavate a site by cutting a slice through the
ground so they can see how the layers build up. This is called a section.
Draw an arrow to match the sentences with the correct layers shown
below:
The newest rubbish is in
this layer
The oldest rubbish is in
this layer
© Canterbury Archaeological Trust
As we can see from the picture above, the oldest layers of material are
usually found at the bottom.
On an excavation, archaeologists can work out how out old these layers are
by the objects they find, such as coins and pottery. These objects are called
artefacts.