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Those who have visited this Archaeology Excavation Simulation web site previously will notice significant updates to design features, some corrections, and many additions to the original version due in the main to Google Sites' deadline requirement to migrate the old site to its new platform. The URL remains identical to the original. The Acknowledgements & Narrated PowerPoint pages have been updated with new images as of 19 March 2022.

Well excavated square by one of the professional archaeologists overseeing the salvage project on the SIL 182 prehistoric boreal forest site. It shows pieces of a ceramic jar remaining in the original depression that held it upright. See  a model of it on the Travelling Exhibit. page. Also note the dark color of an associated hearth feature in the upper left corner of this square.

Realistic physical three-dimensional simulation of this excavated square is not possible. 

However, this web site describes an alternate very practical, realistic, and elegant mode of simulating archaeological sites. 

This web site has been extensively updated as of 23 September 2021.

Please report any dead links encountered by using the Contact page function below.

This venture provides additional illustrations for an article by the creator of this web site, Paul C. Thistle, titled "Archaeology Excavation Simulation: Correcting the Emphasis" in the summer 2012 Journal of Museum Education 37 (2): 65-76, Professionalizing Practice. A Critical Look at Recent Practice in Museum Education Thematic Issue. 

Viewers of this site are encouraged to read this article at https://miscellaneousmuseology.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/01-archaeology-excavation-simulation.pdf  or full text is also available at DOI: 10.1080/10598650.2012.11510732 .

Note that an anonymous reviewer of my draft article submission wrote: 

"This piece makes a good case for rethinking many archaeology table top programs that have been developed. . . . It does provide a well developed alternative approach as a replacement. The specific example is brilliant. I can imagine ways I can apply a similar approach both in formal and free-choice learning situations" [emphasis added].

This web site outlines archaeological excavation techniques on a specific prehistoric boreal forest site used as the basis for the design of The Sam Waller Museum's (The Pas, Manitoba, Canada) archaeological excavation simulation school programme that is significantly more realistic than the typical inaccurate 'sandbox approach' that arguably is in fact miseducational for participants. 

The process outlined here places emphasis directly on the actual skills professional archaeologists apply in the field and in the laboratory rather than on the unrealistic trowelling in a loose matrix used in most  other simulation programmes.

Also see the author's 5-minute 2011 Ontario Museum Association Ignite! presentation as an introduction to this web site's simulation programme and the PowerPoint slides of this presentation. Another page Narrated PowerPoint for OAS  contains an hour-long presentation detailing the various aspects of the concept.