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How to Dig a Cave Out for Arrowheads

Since prehistoric times, caves have provided humans shelter and locations for rituals. With the passage of time, everyday tools and cultural items were buried beneath the cave floor. With a little time and effort rare artifacts of the past can be unearthed. Cave excavations in locations across America have yielded some of archaeology's most spectacular finds such as a 9,000 year old sandal found in Oregon's Fort Rock cave in 1938. At another location in Oregon called Paisley Caves the oldest known traces of human DNA in the world have been excavated in the form of a 14,300 year old coprolite.

Things You'll Need

25 1-foot wood stakes
Hammer
Twine
Trowel
Shovel
Screen, 2 feet by 2 feet with 1/4-inch mesh
Several five gallon plastic buckets

Instructions

- 1
  Prepare the floor of the cave for excavation by staking out a grid pattern using a hammer and small wood stakes to create squares that each measure about 9 sq. ft. The squares provide a clear manner in which to systematically excavate the cave floor.
- 2
  Connect the stakes using twine to create the grid of squares upon the soil surface inside the cave. String the twine from stake to stake.
- 3
  Excavate one square area at a time by carefully digging out the dirt using small hand tools such as a trowel. Place all dirt being removed from the cave floor into storage containers such as five gallon plastic buckets to be sifted and searched at a later time. The emphasis at this stage is to obtain as much dirt as possible from the cave floor.
- 4
  Pour the dirt from the cave floor out of the five gallon plastic buckets and onto the sifting screen to search for arrowheads and other artifacts.
- 5
  Gently shake the dirt back and forth across the sifting screen and remove arrowheads and artifacts from the dirt. Too much force in the sifting process can shatter ancient artifacts.
- 6
  Pour the remaining clods of dirt from the sifting process onto a smaller gauged sifting screen and carefully break apart the dirt clods by hand, keeping a sharp eye out for arrowheads and pieces of other artifacts.

Rock Collecting