Earthworks
These comprise mounds and hollows, banks and ditches made of earth, clay and soil, often representing collapsed structures.

EDM
This stands for 'electronic distance measurer', a surveying device that measures the distance between the point on the ground at which it is set up and a second point, by sending a beam of light towards a prism on the second point and calculating the time taken for the light to be reflected back to it. The position of a large number of points can be recorded rapidly and accurately using a combined EDM and theodolite, the latter measuring the horizontal angle or direction of the second point. This enables an archaeologist to record the position of anything – a building, a ditch, even a grid required for fieldwalking – by measuring distance and direction to a number of points on the thing being surveyed. This information is integrated with Ordnance Survey maps and plotted on to a combined plan using a computerised software package. See computer graphics.

Emmer
A type of early wheat. One of the earliest cereal crops to be brought to Britain at the time of the introduction of animal domestication and husbandry. The other main wheat is einkorn. The ultimate origin of these crops lies in the Middle East where similar cereals are still grown. Emmer is richer in protein than many modern wheats, but is rather harder to harvest because the heads are difficult to detach from the stalks.

Enclosure
Archaeologically speaking, an enclosure is a bank and ditch. Many of the sites that archaeologists have to deal with are not very obvious except for the enclosures, which now remain as earthworks or cropmarks. Many Iron-Age sites, which once would have contained roundhouses with all their attendant farmyard structures, are now only visible as enclosures – rarely as earthworks but often as cropmarks. The larger settlements of the Iron Age, which must have been large villages or small towns, are now marked by surrounding ramparts and ditches and are known as hillforts. Medieval settlements that were once manors or farms now only remain as moated sites. See also field boundaries.

Environmental archaeology
The part of archaeology concerned with seeds, pollen, snails, beetles and other insects, bones and so on, which can be used to reconstruct what the environment looked like in the past. Most of the specialists who deal with this sort of evidence come from the nearest related sciences, such as botany, zoology and ecology. A particularly interesting and exciting form of archaeology, it attempts to put the settlements and sites of past periods into context, enabling us to see what the countryside (and towns) were like for earlier people, by using information on the sorts of crops they grew (and weeds they endured) and the wild animals they hunted and the domesticated ones they managed for food.

Excavation
What most people think archaeologists do, although it is merely one part of a long process of investigation of a site or area. This begins with research into what is already known, often from a Sites and Monuments Record, followed by field survey and recording on the ground, and an air survey and the examination of aerial photography. There must be good reasons for deciding to excavate a site as excavation actually means destruction; therefore, archaeologists must be sure that the site can only be understood by taking it apart. Excavations vary enormously – from small exploratory holes for evaluation and assessment work, through trenches dug to obtain information on dating and sequences, to great area excavations designed to recover all the evidence of ephemeral buildings and agricultural structures. A wide range of techniques and tools are also used, from big yellow diggers to small pointing trowels. See also rescue excavation.

Extended burial
Burial in which the body is laid out flat, usually face up.