Pit houses, how do you tell Options

[Olivia R]

dear Mrs N.O

This last weeks ouestion that I fergot to write but how do you tell it is a pit house? Is there a small inpression in the ground?

[Misty_Nikula_Ohlsen]

Olivia
You can first tell if something MIGHT be a pit house by finding a depression in the ground about 2-3 feet deep and maybe 6-10 feet in diameter. The sides would just slope down like a bowl. If the sides are very steep, though, or if the vegetation is the same inside the hollow, then it might be a military trench or bunker instead of a pit house. To tell for sure you can either dig a small hole (excavate or use a soil probe) inside the hollow to see if you find any artifacts or do like we did most of the time, which is to dig outside the pit and look for artifacts. That way we didn't disturb anything inside the pit house since we were not doing a complete excavation, but we could still verify if it was a pit house and get information about who might have lived there.
Mrs. N-O