Actually, a farmer found the first clues that I might be hidden under the ground. When he was clearing a new plot of land, he uncovered some layers above me, and saw pottery. He didn't know how old it was, but just to be safe, he called archaeologists. NEVER DIG ON YOUR OWN! You need to leave this part to the professionals or little hints of history like me can be lost.
Archaeologists focus on sites. A site is simply an area where artifacts (like me) are found. Artifacts can be anything really! They just need to have been used, made, or even touched by humans, and then they can hold a lot of meaning for archaeologists... but that's for later!
When the archaeologists got to my site, the first thing they did was a ground survey. It's really simple actually, and just looks like this:
Archaeologists and other people on the site just walk in as straight of lines as they can, and note what they see on the ground. They try to cover as much land as they can, so that they can see where the best place to dig will be and to see what the surrounding landscape may hold.
From the ground survey, they didn't find anything. The only place where they saw pottery was in the area above me, because the farmer had accidentally dug it up. They knew it was possible that there could be pottery everywhere buried, but since my area was already partially dug up, they decided to focus here first. Lucky me!
The next step for them was to try to see what was under the ground without digging. For this, they use... big word alert... magnetometry! It's not scary I promise! It uses a device like this:
The device reads the earth's own magnetic field (because the earth is magnetic!) and looks for disruptions in the magnetic field. By walking in straight lines over an area, and putting all of the readings together using a computer, archaeologists create maps that look like this:
This map shows archaeologists that there are things under the ground, but doesn't tell them what the things are, how deep they are, or what they are made out of. Things made out of metal make big disturbances, because metals are magnetic.
But, believe it or not, I can create disturbances too! Although I'm not as magnetic as metal, there is a little iron in my clay that when fired becomes a very weak magnet, which causes a disturbance that can be picked up by the magnetometer.
So, that's how the archaeologists decided to dig above me and call the area around me and above me a site! They saw disturbances in the map and wanted to check it out. Archaeologists don't always chose to dig a site because sometimes there may not be enough time, money, or need to dig. But, when they do dig, they like to make sure they have enough time, money, need, and of course a super awesome and special site. And my site is all of those, so they chose to dig!
I'm so cool, right??? Let the real fun begin!
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