Laying the Foundations, which developed out of the British Museum's 'Iraq Scheme' archaeological training programme, covers the core components for putting together and running an archaeological field programme. The focus is on practicality. Individual chapters address background research, the use of remote sensing, approaches to surface collection, excavation methodologies, survey with total (and multi) stations, use of a dumpy level, context classification, on-site recording, databases and registration, environmental protocols, conservation, photography, illustration, post-excavation site curation and report writing. While the manual is oriented to the archaeology of Iraq, the approaches are no less applicable to the Middle East more widely, an aim hugely facilitated by the open-source distribution of translations into Arabic and Kurdish.

About the Author
John MacGinnis is based in the Middle East Department of the British Museum and the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research in Cambridge. His interests are the archaeology and epigraphy of Mesopotamia in the first millennium BC. He has participated in fieldwork across the Middle East, including at the Assyrian sites of Nineveh, Nimrud, Ziyaret Tepe, Tell Masaikh and the fortress of Usu Aska in the Darband-i Rania pass in Iraqi Kurdistan. Sebastien Rey is Lead archaeologist at the British Museum (Iraq Emergency Heritage Management Training Program) and Codirector of Tello-Girsu (Southern Iraq).


Book Information
ISBN 9781803271408
Author John MacGinnis
Format Paperback
Page Count 308
Imprint Archaeopress Archaeology
Publisher Archaeopress
Weight(grams) 845g