Archaeology has gotten a bit more "scientific" in recent decades. And the dig at Magna reflects this new focus.
This is Wally, named of course for the nearby Hadrian's Wall. It is monitoring various aspects of underground chemistry. Water levels, pH, oxygen levels. There is a concern that climate change is damaging the anaerobic layers deep under ground.
The fence is there to keep sheep, especially the new lambs, from getting too frisky around the electronics.
One day we had some University types show up and deploy this equipment:
It looks like something you'd use to shock night crawlers out of the ground. It actually is some sort of new geophysical imaging gear. I asked, and was assured that the nightcrawlers are in no way bothered by whatever rays or beams are being sent into the earth.
We do a fair amount of sampling of pits and ditches. In theory you can figure out what people were doing, what they were eating, what sort of plants were growing on the site in times past. The samples collected are stirred and sieved.
Not as exciting as excavating, but when I was assigned to this duty a sudden thunderstorm brought everyone back to the dig HQ looking like drowned rats, so there was that.
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