Under the direction of a professional archaeologist team led by Michael E. Kelly, high school students from Thompson, MB and supervisor/teachers carried out the excavation of the site SIL 182 located on Sandhill Bay, Southern Indian Lake in northern Manitoba, Canada in the traditional territory of the O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation. This boreal forest prehistoric site was being salvaged during the summer of 1975 prior to flooding caused by the hydroelectric Churchill River Diversion Project undertaken by Manitoba Hydro.See James B. Waldram (1993) As Long as the Rivers Run: Hydroelectric Development and Native Communities, U. of Manitoba Press. 

In the above image note that proper controlled horizontal excavation technique produces a flat surface with artifacts and features exposed on a more or less level interface. This makes site simulation with paper layers the simplest and most elegant means of 'excavating' by activity participants simply lifting a piece of paper to reveal the appearance of a highly realistic  perfectly 'excavated' square beneath. 

At The Sam Waller Museum, a modern, historic, and prehistoric 3-level stratigraphy simulated site was created for 'excavation'  by senior elementary school students using layers of newsprint paper to recreate stratigraphy.

The simulated site is built on the floor using three stratigraphic layers including a prehistoric bottom level, an historic middle level, and a modern surface level. The surveyed grid of an archaeological excavation site is simulated by means of ½ x ½ inch wooden posts glued and nailed to small quarter inch plywood bases that serve as posts to support the cord that marks the limits of each excavation square. I recommend that the simulated 'excavation' squares should be reduced in size from the normal 1 meter to a 75 centimeter quadrangle. This eliminates the need for participants to step or kneel inside the squares to measure and record to eliminate potential crushing of fragile material placed below the paper layer being 'excavated'.

Archaeological sites are often sampled in the way shown above rather than being completely excavated as in the case of the salvage work pictured at the left, since that site was being excavated in its entirety because future excavation projects would be impossible due to hydroelectric dam flooding raising water levels by 17 feet.

simulation  n.  1. a model or set of circumstances imitating a real or hypothetical thing, state of affairs, or process.  2. representation of select key characteristics of the operation or features of one process or system through the use of another.  3. simplified version of reality bounded by artificial constraints and a limited number of variables.  4. sham, counterfeit, feigned

Key Issues:

  i)   valid sources of information

  ii)  selection of key characteristics and   behaviours

  iii)  fidelity to reality

  iv) validity of outcomes 

Humphreys & Imbert, Models, Simulations and Representations (New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 179, 231, passim).

Rim sherd from a new form of pottery discovered on SIL 182 now called "Linklater Three Row Punctate" after the Indgenous student excavator here, Robert Linklater. 

Unprovenanced Mueum pottery rim and body sherds along with fresh water clam shells used to replicate animal remains in the simulated prehistoric  food processing area of the simulation.

SIL 182 post mold composed of rotten wood that reveals the exact shape of a wooden upright including the split at its lower point inserted into the obviously stratified ground. Stratigraphy layers like this cannot be accurately simulated in a sandbox or other form of loose matrix.

Wooden floor boards dated  ca. 1875 at Fort Walsh, a North-West Mounted Police historic site in the Cypress Hills, Saskatchewan, Canada.