Excavating in breccia: new methods developed at the Benzú rockshelter

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URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10498/17299
DOI: 10.1017/s0003598x00048328
URL: http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/086/ant0861167.htm
URL: http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/086/ant0861167.htm
ISSN: 0003-598X
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2012-01-01Department
Historia, Geografía y FilosofíaSource
Antiquity 86 (2012): 1167–1178Abstract
Excavators examining breccia deposits are
faced with the prospect of extracting finds
from a material akin to concrete. Nevertheless
such deposits are sometimes the only witness of
early Palaeolithic occupation. Our inventive
authors put aside the hammers, acids and
explosives of earlier days, and used quarry
techniques to cut the breccia into small
blocks, which they then freed from their finds
in the laboratory, using tools developed in
palaeontology. As a result, they gathered a huge
harvest of stone tools, bones and shells. It all
goes to show that archaeological excavation
is an exercise of infinite variety: to every
problem, its solution; to every terrain, its
method.