![]() This dirty job was done by a separate occupational category in its own right, of lower social status, whose practitioners were also referred to, not without irony, as ‘gold diggers’. These shafts, which were widespread in the late Middle Ages, had to be emptied at regular intervals. ‘Latrines’ are shafts or pits reinforced with walls or timberwork, which received the refuse from lavatories (‘privies’). The ‘double seat’ of the lavatory is clearly visible in the centre. One hundred or so latrines were excavated during digs in Lübeck city centre between 20, including this privy dating from the early 13th century. Waste is a mirror of the society that makes it, and the archaeologist’s task is to unscramble this distorted picture through the filter of its often very haphazard preservation, and the cultural distance of several hundred years. Much more often, it deals with lost and discarded things: broadly speaking, waste. So, in methodological terms, archaeology as a discipline lies somewhere between the natural sciences and the humanities.Īrchaeology rarely deals with structures damaged by chance – the evidence of natural disasters such as the volcanic eruption that buried people and houses in the Roman city of Pompeii – or deliberately hidden objects. If written and pictorial sources are available, these will also be taken into account. But nonetheless, archaeology asks historical and sociological questions, and tries to answer them. The tools and procedures used by archaeologists on a dig are more like those of geologists than historians. ![]() It relies on the extraction of its most important sources – found objects, deposits and remains of building structures and deposits – from the soil. Archaeology can justifiably be described as probably the ‘dirtiest’ of the historical sciences.
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