An artifact is anything made or used by people. An artifact can be anything from a 10,000 year old stone tool, to the pop can you recycled after yesterday's lunch. Each licence is good for one site and one year. When she gets a licence, an Archaeologist agrees to write a site report , telling the world what she found on the site. Once the Archaeologist has received the archaeological licence, she is ready to survey the site.
Surveying is a lot like taking a huge piece of graph paper and placing it down over the site.
The graph is called a site grid . By digging on a site grid , you can be sure that all of the squares or units on the site are the same size. The next step is to remove the sod and topsoil , which is usually the modern grass level. Sod is removed with shovels by digging up the soil in narrow and shallow strips. Shovel shining is removing the topsoil by skimming the surface with the shovel blade, taking a thin layer of soil off the surface.