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 INTRO
Phil Harding introduces the test pit.
The first thing you're going to have to do to open your square is cut the turf. For that you want to use a spade, not a shovel but a spade. Once you've got your square laid out with a string, put the spade just inside the line of the string and push. Gradually work along the string cutting the turf as you go. It's always better to cut just inside the line, you can always trim up the bits outside later on.
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 TURF
Phil explains what to do with your turf.
When you've cut the turf all the way round the string and actually defined the area of your test pit, cut the middle into a series of small squares about 25 centimetres square, that's about 16 turfs, and then gradually ease the spade and slide the spade underneath the turf - you don't want to go too deep as you might destroy the archaeology - and then lift a nice turf. Now, where are you going to stack the turf? Don't put the turf where you want to put the spoil. Don't put the turf where you might want to walk back to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. Put it well out of the way and when you stack it put turf to turf and dirt to dirt. Keep doing that until you have taken all 16 squares up and now you're ready to dig.
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 PIT
Phil shows how to keep your pit vertical.
You've got to remember this is a one-metre test pit so your one metre at the top must equal one metre at the bottom. All the sides must be strictly vertical. It's very easy to cut a vertical edge to a trench, and again use a spade. What you have to do is get directly above the edge and trim down with the edge of the spade. Try and keep a lot of big stones in place, others will come out. Work right down to the bottom of your one metre test pit. You probably won't have to do too much trimming up as you will have been excavating by hand as you go down through the layers. Under no circumstances lean out, cause when you aim down the blade of the spade if you're not careful you'll undercut the edge of the trench and your test pit will be a lot bigger at the bottom than the top.
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 TROWEL
Phil explains the ins and outs of trowels.
Now's the time to learn about the most important tool that any archaeologist ever has or ever uses, the pointing trowel. An ordinary bricklayer's pointing trowel. Try to get hold of one where the blade is actually forged into the tang as it goes into the handle. Not welded or riveted but forged, the welded or riveted ones are by and large very poorly made tools and they won't last you five minutes. The archaeologist always uses the edge of the trowel, not the point, that's what gardeners do. When you use it try and keep the trowel relatively flat and keep paring off thin layers of the trench. Always keep the trowel nice and flat. Take off nice thin layers of soil. Always look out for major colour changes and texture changes in the soil. If you work nice and cleanly you'll actually be able see where the edge of a layer or feature begins. Don't be tempted to dig underneath, this is bad practice, if you find a stone work gradually round it, who knows it might be the first stone of your wall.
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 WHEN TO STOP
Carenza shows how close to the surface archaeology can be.
If you hit what you think might be solid archaeology in your test pit, stop whatever depth you've got to. In this test pit we've gone down just forty centimetres from the turf, but already we've hit building mortar, shell, tile, pottery and bone in a really densely packed layer, that's an archaeological feature. If you hit something like that, stop, clean it up, record it and end your test pit as it's told you already what you want to know.
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