Stratigraphy and dating
Adult · 35 minutes · Reconstruct a site from its layers.
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Our learning goal
Reconstruct a site from its layers.
Your turn: Choose one thing you would like to understand by the end.
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My lesson notes & project
Full teaching script
- Today: Stratigraphy and dating. Our goal: Reconstruct a site from its layers.
- Take one idea at a time. Pause after each sentence; ask for repetition whenever you need it.
- Excavation destroys the thing it records, so recording is the discipline. Stratigraphy reads deposits in the order they formed, each context numbered and related in a Harris matrix. Dating is relative (sequence, typology of pottery and tools) and absolute: radiocarbon for organic material up to ~50,000 years, dendrochronology for precise timber years, thermoluminescence for fired clay. Context is everything — an object without its layer has lost most of what it could tell you.
- Together: choose one example from the explanation and show how it works. What do you notice?
- Your turn: Draw a section with four contexts and build the matrix that orders them.
- Reflect: what made sense, and what would you like explained differently?
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