Trawick Ward explains ancient pits
About this video
- Date created
- 1998–2003
- Duration
- 0:51
- Location
- North Carolina
- File
- Flash Video
- License
- This video copyright ©1998. All Rights Reserved
- Source
- Original video housed by Research Laboratories of Archaeology
See this video in context
- Excavating Occaneechi Town: An archaeology primer: Republished with permission from the Research Laboratories of Archaeology, the Archaeology Primer uses photographs of the excavations at Occaneechi Town to introduce fundamental concepts of archaeology. The primer provides an introduction to the methods of archaeology and to some common types of artifacts, and prepares students to participate in an electronic archaeological dig. (Page 9)
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- Search LEARN NC for American Indian towns, American Indians, archaeology, excavations, North Carolina, Occaneechi, and videos.
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Video of archaeologist Trawick Ward at Occaneechi Town explaining why ancient pits were dug and refilled.
Transcript
The pits represent probably storage pits, dug originally to store things in or to hide things in. And then after they were no longer used for that purpose — perhaps the water table rose, or bugs infested the pits or whatever — they were re-filled with garbage, usually domestic refuse from food preparation and consumption. And the significance for us as archaeologists is that by studying and analyzing the content of these pits, we can learn a great deal about the diet of the people, and also something about social organization, in terms of how many people were engaged in meals and cooking and food preparation activities. So, there is a wealth of information in the pits, probably the closest thing to a cornucopia that archaeologists find.
