If you have ever had to do any sort of paper work for an excavation chances are that you have had to describe soils. There is of course a trick to determining if a soil is clay, silt, sand, loamysand, sandy-clay, etc. It involves rolling wet soil into a ball and then squeezing it out into a ribbon. The quality of the ribbon will tell you the quality of the soil. I of course always forget what means what. Nice ribbon, is that clay? So I was very happy when I stumbled upon this webpage. There are two excellent graphics, one of which is directions. I will have to print these out before I go into the field.
Posted in: Wildcard
Doug's Archaeology 
Jim Finnigan
June 29, 2012
Very complicated, I will have to try it out. I just do the spit test, spit on a pinch of soil between a finger and thumb tip and if its gritty it’s sand, soapy its silt, and if it rolls its clay (with a guess a proportions). The problem with this, other than spit and mud on your fingers, and some younger crew totally grossed out, is that it only means something as it related to the depositional environment of the site (other than if it is sand, it will screen better). So unless we take the time to understand why it is sandy, those observations are not that useful in my view. If its important, I bring in a geoarchaeologist who has better tools that spit.
Doug Rocks-Macqueen
June 30, 2012
Grossed out- not sure how long they will last in CRM. All of our forms had a box for this information so you had to fill it out no matter what. I totally agree the why is important. I know for some of the bigger sites(several hundred meters across) we were on it was very helpful in post-ex when we were trying to figure the stratigraphic of the site from the forms. Some sites though it was practically useless- it’s sand, it’s all sand.
Bill Clayton
January 24, 2017
….or learn as much as you can about the soils, sediments and geomorphology of the region in which you work. One really can’t do the job without it. My biggest beef with archaeological training since I “came over” from geology is the utter lack of training in the geological sciences… of which archaeology is logically a part of. Archaeology is NOT anthropology. Archaeology is a forensic earth science… the science of the cultural portion of the regolith on this planet. It’s hard to fathom. Maybe for some.
Geoarchs are spendy contracts. Limited budgets don’t allow the trusty geoarch to be standing there with the buck auger at the ready. Learn about it yourself.
After all.. it’s not rocket science. It’s archaeology.
Danielle
September 24, 2012
Reblogged this on Dirty Adventures.