PRE-EXCAVATION

Jim Potter

This phase of the project is an important one because it sets the stage for the rest of the
project. The first task in this endeavor is to pull your team together and assign tasks.

Roles and Responsibilities

The Principal Investigator (PI) is responsible for overall quality control (QC) of
deliverables. The PI is not just a content editor at the end of QC process. The PI should
be involved at the inception of project, including workplans and field strategies, staffing
of field personnel, review of field forms, and, obviously, the reporting. But QC is not just
the responsibility of the PI. The PI often has limited hours on a project and is not always
in the field. This is where the concept of a QC Team comes in, which includes field
directors, field supervisors, and field techs.
The Field Director, in particular, is responsible for the quality, completeness, and
accuracy of all field data, including notes, maps, photographs, and sample and artifact
collection. In turn, the Field Director relies on his or her team of field techs to conduct
these tasks to professional standards. In that vein, the field techs are expected to
collect, record, and document the data sufficiently; the Field Director ensures, on a daily
basis, that this is occurring; and the PI ensures, particularly at the pre-excavation stage,
that the Field Director understands the goals and constraints of the project. The PI
should also review the data that are being collected on a weekly or biweekly basis. The
PaleoWay facilitates both on-the-ground and remote QC, allowing the Field Director and
PI to work together to operationalize QC protocols.
Field Directors are responsible for taking daily notes during excavations. These notes
are stored in the FileMaker database in the Notes section. Each daily note should
summarize people on each crew(s) and what was completed each day: excavation units
and features excavated, along with any backhoe or other work occurring on the site.
Please ensure that backhoe and tribal monitor hours are recorded in the Notes form, so
the project managers can rectify with the invoices from the company or tribe providing
these services.
The goal of clarifying roles and responsibilities and forming a QC Team during the pre-
excavation phase is to 1) increase quality of fieldwork and reporting (QA/QC), 2)
increase efficiencies in field, and 3) reduce the time the PI or Project Manager spends
redoing/fixing work on the backend.
Setting up your QC Team
An effective way to approach field roles is to divide them among the field crew (e.g.,
have one crew member responsible for photography, one for the PD log, one for Inkpad
drawing, and one for printing quick response (QR) tags. Dividing field roles affords crew
members a sense of ownership for a particular task, increases the probability of
consistency among features and units, allows for accountability, and facilitates peer
review in the field. This ensures that any problems are rectified as it is easy to identify
who took the fuzzy photographs or isn’t mapping profiles in enough detail. Have the QC
Team regularly peer-review data, writeups, drawings, photos, etc. Make sure to remark
on really good work as examples of how a task should be done and not just point out
problems or issues that need fixing or improving.
It is important that each member of the team is instilled with a sense of ownership at the
outset of the project. One way to do this is to assign specific on-site roles during the
pre-excavation stage.

Setting Up a Site for Excavation

Setting up your site for excavation involves several key steps. The first is getting your
database set up for the project on the project iPads. This can be done with the help of a
database manager or specialist. Getting the database set up should include interfaces
for feature forms and the provenience designation (PD) log. The next step is read the
testing or data recovery plan (Plan) for the site in detail. Are we digging all the features?
Are we digging features completely? How much time do we have to excavate each
feature? What if we find additional features? What if we find human remains? How are
we spacing our trenches? The excavation strategy should be laid out in detail in the
Plan, and the Plan should be onsite and understood by both the PI and the Field
Director.

Adhering to the Testing or Data Recovery Plan

The team should never deviate from the agency-approved Plan. The Plan should be
followed exactly, even if it seems as if additional work or a different excavation strategy
is warranted. Make sure to stay within the scope of work as outlined in the Plan. If there
are question about the efficacy of the Plan, discuss it with the PI. Be aware that any
deviations from the Plan also can affect scope, budget, and schedule.

How to Approach Data Collection

That said, there are always decisions that need to be made regarding data collection
that are not covered in the Plan. One of the biggest effects on project execution is the
collection of extraneous data or information. Make sure that all data collected are either
required by the Plan or necessary for the final deliverable. Common extraneous data or
information collected include recording Munsell colors/hues for excavation levels when
they will only be reported by strata, taking multiple in -progress photographs of feature or
excavation unit/level excavations, drawing extraneous maps, collecting extraneous soil
samples, and counting or analyzing artifacts in the field that will be analyzed in the lab.
Make sure you’re not duplicating effort with the lab, collecting data that is not required in
the Plan, or collecting information that will not be needed for the final report, including
photographs. Make sure you understand what photographs are required—it may be that
sediment profiles will be constructed using photogrammetry and 3D modeling, which will
require many more photographs than if profiles are drawn in Inkpad. This should be
outlined in the Plan. Finally, does the Plan outline a sampling plan to effectively collect
needed data?

Sampling in the Field

To mitigate the collection of extraneous data, it may be appropriate to operationalize a
sampling strategy that reduces the amount of work needed on a site while ensuring that
a representative sample of data is recovered that can effectively address the research
questions posed in the research design and fulfill the data requirements of the Plan.
Usually, the sampling strategy will be explicitly outlined in the Plan. But there may be
occasions that the Plan leaves latitude in the sampling approach taken in the field.
These might include excavating a representative sample of features or excavating a
representative sample within a feature (e.g., excavating half of a pit rather than a wh ole
pit). The PI should be involved in any sampling decisions made outside the purview of
the Plan. Regardless, make sure, during the pre-excavation stage, that all crew
members understand the sampling strategy and the data collection goals of the project.
This will help reduce the likelihood of wasting time collecting extraneous data and help
get buy-in from all crew members regarding the excavation strategy and instill a sense
of ownership among crew members.