Excavate.si
The AI guide to how archaeologists dig up the past
From stratigraphy to radiocarbon dating to the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, learn how real archaeological excavations work - the methods, the famous digs, and the ethical questions archaeology faces today.
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What you get
Everything Excavate.si gives you
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Excavation methods
Stratigraphy, grid recording, and how a real dig site is documented.
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Dating techniques
How radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology, and other methods pin down an age.
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Famous digs
Pompeii, Troy, Tutankhamun's tomb, and other landmark discoveries, explained.
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Go deeper
How archaeology uncovers the past
A field guide to excavation methods, dating science, and history's most famous digs.
Excavation methods
- Stratigraphy — Reading layers of soil to determine relative age - deeper generally means older.
- Test pits and trenches — Small exploratory digs used to assess a site before committing to full excavation.
- Grid recording — Dividing a site into a numbered grid so every find's exact location is documented.
Dating techniques
- Radiocarbon dating — Developed by Willard Libby in 1949, measures carbon-14 decay in organic material.
- Dendrochronology — Dating wood by counting and matching its tree-ring growth patterns.
- Thermoluminescence — Dates fired materials like pottery by measuring trapped radiation since last heating.
Famous digs
- Pompeii — Buried by Vesuvius in 79 CE, systematically excavated starting in 1748.
- Troy — Heinrich Schliemann's excavations from the 1870s identified a likely site in modern Turkey.
- Tutankhamun's tomb — Discovered largely intact by Howard Carter in 1922 in Egypt's Valley of the Kings.
- Terracotta Army — Thousands of life-sized clay soldiers found near Xi'an, China, in 1974.
Ethics today
- Repatriation debates — Ongoing disputes over whether artifacts in foreign museums should return to origin countries.
- Looting and trafficking — Illegal excavation and artifact smuggling remain major threats to archaeological sites.
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