buried ruins

[logman]

How dose archaeology become buried under tones of earth ?

[jno]

you know how dust accumulates from nowhere on the top shelf after a week or two? Okay, multiply that by a thousand years or two. As it's outdoors, think of the effects of rain and wind. Add in the debris caused when buildings themselves disintegrate over time. In the case of sites that remain lived in (eg London) people will actually rebuild over older ruins... then their houses fall down and the next ones will be built higher still.

[logman]

Hi jno, Yes i do know how dust collects on my shelves i've been cultivating it for years, (how did you know about that?) i just console myself to the fact that house dust gets to a certain level then stops. I remember a few weeks back someone asked a similar question re stepping down when you enter old churches, i guess leaves and debris build up outside and the grass etc is constantly growing up through it,but it still amaze's me how much it can build up in just 2or 3 hundred years Thank You..

[spudqueen]

Yes, some old places, eg Troy have about 7 levels of buildings all built on top of the ruins of the older ones. Some places are abandoned, some of the stones are taken by local people for building new buildings and the remains eventually get covered by soil, grass, and eventually shrubs and then trees. We recently went to a site known for it's fossils (or so my friends husband said) but when we got there it was 90 per cent grass, when friends husband was last there (about 15 years ago) all you could see were fossils. In about 100 years it could well have small tress on it!

[PhilBy]

Simply because most ruins are burried by man. If you visit archaeology sites say on the moors you can find iron age sites that have nothing more than a covering of bracken etc.

[Peter Pedant]

People throw things away.

Apparently in the US of A, 1790s you just rollered the back yard where you had thrown all the clag and dumped a bit more on it !

Roman strata are always much more thick and with much less used stuff than the succeeding layers.

[1rovert]

Also like York. When they were building a car park they found some Viking remains, now known as Jorvik, archaelogists found that for centuries, people had built their houses exactly on top of Viking houses. I was lucky enough to see the site while the archaeologists were still excuvating it.