Musings of a Buried Cultural Property Excavation Researcher ① | What do researchers do?

Hello. Or, nice to meet you.
My name is "Tai no Tai," and I work as a "Buried Cultural Property Excavation Researcher."
Since the last post ended with a simple self-introduction, this is my first post with actual content.
The previous post is here →https://note.com/deep_lily1832/n/nca2ead7aa2e0

Please take a look if you are interested.
Now, as promised, this time is about "What do researchers do?" What do we actually do, anyway?

■ What is a Buried Cultural Property Excavation Researcher?

First, what kind of image comes to mind when you hear "Buried Cultural Property Excavation Researcher"?
By the way, the image at the beginning is an illustration of a researcher created by an AI.

I imagine many of you think of "a person in work clothes wearing a helmet and a name tag around their neck." These are mainly the people you see answering interviews on the news.
That person might be a "prefectural employee," a "city hall employee" who is a "curator," or someone from a "Buried Cultural Property Excavation Corporation." They are quite official people.
Besides that, the number of private companies conducting buried cultural property surveys is increasing, and there are many private researchers as well.
As you can see, there are surprisingly many places where researchers belong.

I don't think there is any hierarchy based on where you belong (though some people might think there is). In the end, what matters everywhere is trust and your competence as a researcher.

■ What do Buried Cultural Property Excavation Researchers do?

So, what do buried cultural property excavation researchers actually do?
The work of a researcher can be broadly divided into two categories.
The first is conducting excavation surveys on-site.
The second is compiling the survey results into an excavation report.
Regarding the second point in particular,I have a lot of complaintsI have a lot to talk about, so this time I will focus on the first part: the work at the excavation site.

The main tasks of a researcher at an excavation site are, above all, safety management, followed by assigning tasks to workers, and finally, making judgments about the survey from an archaeological perspective.

First, safety management goes without saying. A common occurrence at sites is someone sticking one foot into a pit (a small hole) and falling, breaking a bone. That's scary. Let's be careful. It might be a good idea to compile a list of near-miss incidents sometime.

Next, not all workers are veterans; many are working for the first time. Therefore, most of the work involves adjustments like "let's pair the newcomers with veterans" or "this person did a tough job yesterday, so let's give them a different task today." If you mess this up, you'll be in big trouble. Let's be careful.

Finally, there is making judgments about the survey. Many of you might have thought this was the most important part, and there is a reason for that.
That reason is that excavation surveys don't progress very much in a single day.

For example, let's say we are excavating the remains of a Jomon period dwelling (you can skip this part if you want).
First, we stretch strings in a cross shape and excavate while leaving belts of soil. Since there are usually four sections, we assign one or two people to dig and one person to carry the soil for each.
Then, we dig down while searching for artifacts with a trowel, leaving behind any good artifacts we find.
Now, from the start of the morning until the end of the day, how much progress have we made? Depending on the height of the detection surface, I think it's a good result if we've reached halfway to the floor level. Tomorrow, I'd like to finish the remaining excavation and, if possible, do the stratigraphic division of the belt cross-sections and take photos.

In other words, there aren't many cases where you have to make an immediate decision on the spot to proceed. If there's something you don't understand, you can just ask someone knowledgeable or look it up.

However, of course, there are situations where you must make a decision on the spot, and above all, there is nothing less trustworthy than a researcher who doesn't know how to survey the features found or what the artifacts are.That hits home.

Therefore, it is important for researchers to study every day. Let's do our best.

Also, there are two types of researchers: those who focus on giving instructions and those who dig themselves. I can't say which is better, but I might muse about this later on.

■ Finally

I've talked about what a buried cultural property excavation researcher is, but this job involves dealing with people more than with ruins (artifacts). That is both interesting and difficult, but I think it is rewarding.

If you are interested in excavation, please try searching for "[City Name] Excavation Survey" on job sites. There are surprisingly many openings for workers.

Since this is getting long, I will end here for now, even though it's a simple overview. If you want to know more specific survey methods or have anything you'd like to ask, please let me know in the comments.

Thank you for reading this far.

Next time, I think it will be about "How to participate in excavation work" or "What do researchers do? Part 2: The Report Edition."

※ Please note that this note is based solely on personal impressions and is not necessarily correct.