Layers

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Archaeology involves looking at lots of layers. Archaeologists dig and try to make sense of what they find by looking at the layers. Here is an example of this. Can you see the three layers of wall painting in this picture? Why do you think there are three layers? Which came first, second, and third?

Today we spent the whole morning at the Ephesus archaeology site and didn’t even see everything. Ephesus is a city with a long history. There were times when it was an important city and other times when it was less important. It had a harbor, but you would not know it now because where the Aegean Sea met the city it has been silted up and now the sea is nowhere in sight. Archaeologists have been digging there for more than 100 years.

Every year they find new things. There were years in the past when they wanted to find as much as possible in a short time and so they used large machinery to clear the area and find the big statues and columns. Because of that they most likely lost many little finds like coins, jewelry, broken pots and even bones. Now we know that all of these types of things are extremely important for learning about life in the past and also figuring out the dates that things happened. Now archaeologists dig very carefully documenting every little thing and keeping the pieces of broken pots and bones that were just thrown away in the past.

Archaeologists have also gone through many different phases in their thinking about restoration of what they find. There were sometimes when reconstruction of what was found so that it looked as close to how it looked originally was important. Other times representing exactly what was there was less important than creative use of materials. What do you think of this restoration? Does it look right to you?




Archaeologists often used concrete to fill in spaces where parts of columns were missing. Modern archaeologists are finding that the concrete is not lasting as long as the original stone and there are many problems with these reconstructions. Take look at this arch. You can see how it has been repaired and now they have to reinforce it with an iron bar so that it does not fall down! Now archaeologists actually want to leave things as close as they can to the way that they find them so that future generations can build on their knowledge. So many times in history someone has come to conclusions about something they found and then in later years other things were found which made the first conclusion impossible. The early conclusions often mislead people who study these sites.

So, one thing that archaeologists are doing always is asking good questions. They don’t always find the answers right away. What good questions do you have about Ephesus, archaeology or anyting else that I might find out about and write about here? I am really looking forward to hearing from you!

On our way out of the site yesterday we saw this interesting sign! What do you think?!