1) What kind of map? A USGS topo map or orthophoto map? If so, get a good GPS receiver. You're gonna need one sooner or later.

2) Consult a Soil Service guide for the area in which you're working. Also, find reports from nearby testing or data recovery projects in which the soil properties are fully discussed. Also, find someone who actually has some knowledge of soils. Consulting with more than one person would be preferable, to minimize the likelihood of getting info from someone who THINKS he knows about soils but really doesn't. 

Wow - 

  My first comment would be - I hope you have not been left alone in the field to make such decisions - clearly you do not have the necessary experience to be on your own yet - and that is fine - nothing against you.  but -

My second comment is - if you have been left out there alone - run away now.  A company that would do that to you is clearly not interested in doing good work, and you probably do want to become associated with them.  With the current economic conditions there are lots of experienced field techs out there looking for work - so for a company to hire someone with no experience, and drop them in a field without more experienced help nearby - tells me they are only out to make money and don't give a hoot about good field work.

now that I have ranted on about the ethical issues - the real answer is you should be able to turn to those that are working with you for guidance.  General theories apply everywhere, but actual field conditions vary from region to region, so checking with those on your crew with more experience is the best way to learn about the area you are working in.  This is especially true about soils.   Hopefully they can teach you a lot about the structure of soil in your area in general and in the specific field condtions.  It takes a lot of years of experience to see the range of variations that are possible (if you can ever see them all).

For Example - a situation I never read about in books but learned from working with geomorphologists years ago - in alluvial settings you will often find yourself in deep soil deposits - which could be natural from millennia of flood accretion, or recent fill dumped in wet areas.  Usually you can tell fill and disturbed soils by mottling or inlcusions within the matrix.  However you can end up in homgenous fill, which can be difficult to tell.  That is were looking at structure can be very helpful.  Often, as flood deposits are laid down, they will form individual beds that are difficult to see - but these individual evnets will often seperate or cleave from higher and lower events.  By gently pulling on a soil sample you can often see these cleaving planes seperate.  If the planes are present and horizontal in situ, then you are probably in a natural soil. But if they are present and vertical or at mixed angles, you may well be in a homogenous fill.

As for the distance issue - practice will help your pacing (depending on your size - typically 30- 35 paces will be 100 feet - learn what works for you).  But you should also be carrying long tapes (100 foot minimum - 300 is even better).  Hopefully your employer provides them.  Two person teams with a tape and compass can survey extensive areas very accurately - if they know what they are doing.  If you are using a compass be sure to account for the declination in your calculatons (the difference between true North and magnetic north) and be to know what the map is aligned to - True North, Magnetic North, or Grid North (random direction chosen by the engineer drawing the plans - often used to make a map "fit" on paper or a project on a landscape).  If you are forced to walk a transect alone, be sure to bring along a few chaining pins as well.  You can anchor the tape end - walk out the needed distance, place the second pin, then go back, pull the first and retrieve your tape.  repeat as needed. 

There is a lot more I would show you if you were working with me - but that really is the key.  A newbie should never be left alone - how else are you supposed to learn the ropes?

Good luck

It is absolutely necessary that you are familiar with how to use a compass. Even a cheap model that you could find in a Walmart or sporting goods store will suffice in many situations. Hopefully you're employers have provided USGS Topographic maps for your survey. If not, Dmack89 may be correct here---RUN! Any firm worth a hoooey is going to provide its field techs with topographic maps. Knowing how to read topographic information is crucial for orienting yourself in the field without the aid of decent landmarks, gps, compass, etc. 

As far as your inquiry regarding stratigraphy goes...well, eh, I'm not sure what sort of depth your going to with your tests but you should be able to tell when and if you have hit sterile soil and at the very least see some basic changes (humic to sandy to clay to whatevs) that oughta correspond to the areas topography/natural environment. For instance, if you are in a field that is tilled or has been tilled, then you should find the boundary of plow zone with a shallow test pit. I would recommend finding a forestry/farm supply store and acquiring a soil probe (long hollow metal tube you can stick down there, pull out, and read the basic stratigraphic profile).

What kind of survey are you on? Which neck of the woods are you in?

 

There are some good books out there on using a compass and map. If you don't want to shell out the money for one, you can always borrow from your local library.

Work on that pacing, as it is an essential part of most archaeological surveys. I've worked for a handful of companies that taped out the distance between each shovel test, but that was the exception rather than the norm.

Gentlemen, gentlemen, or ladies, or whatever the hell you identify yourselves as,

I think in my original post I made it sound like I'm a completely untrained, brainless armchair archaeologist. I know how to use a compass and I can read a bloody map. I also know what a plow zone looks like! Sheesh!

Let me provide you guys with more specific examples about what I was dealing with


1) The crew I was on was surveying through a rather long swampy wood, and at one point or transects turned 40 degrees from south to east. We all knew how to do the turn, we just must have turned too early because we came out of the forest too far to the east. Since we had NO VISIBLE landmarks from which to ID the turn we paced our distance, but at such great distances, pacing isn't too reliable (obviously the topos and airials we had were useless in a deep swampy wood). I asked my crewchief how we could avoid the problem in the future, but she had no good answer.

2) I put in a test pit in an area near a lake. The top 15cm or so was a dark humus, and below it was sand. The crew cheif told me it was disturbed, but didn't explain what she was basing that on...to me it looked like a normal Ap to B transition, even if it was abrupt. So how do you tell?

So please stop treating me like I'm an idiot,

1) The crew I was on was surveying through a rather long swampy wood, and at one point or transects turned 40 degrees from south to east. We all knew how to do the turn, we just must have turned too early because we came out of the forest too far to the east. Since we had NO VISIBLE landmarks from which to ID the turn we paced our distance, but at such great distances, pacing isn't too reliable (obviously the topos and airials we had were useless in a deep swampy wood). I asked my crewchief how we could avoid the problem in the future, but she had no good answer.

Flat, wooded areas and especially swamps open up their own can of worms.  If there are no reference points to shoot a reverse azimuth off of or to determine your location off of an ortho, you really only have two options.  The first is to maintain very tight situational awareness and not deviate from your azimuth and to keep very tight track of your pace count (we used to use "Ranger beads" when I was in the service).  It's hard but it is possible; I served several years as OPFOR at Ft. Polk and we rarely used GPS units.

The second option is to ask your GIS staff to upload the project boundaries into your GPS units.  This should only take him or her about 30 seconds and should be SOP for any survey in this age.  Other than that, cross country linear surveys through the woods are extremely difficult without a GPS or any reference points.

Digbot - 

   Sorry we all gave you the benefit of the doubt at being a newbie - after all your original post stated:

Dmak I never suggested I know much about soils...so if you can answer your own question, it would be helpful.

I may have gotten overly defensive; and it wasn't to your first response, which was very helpful.  But your second response is the kind of response which I keep getting to my query from the some of the people at work and at school that I ask...I get a talking at, some pretty words, or advice on how I should do something I already know, but no actual answers. I think you can understand why this is frustrating. Its especially bad when you go to a supposed professional, like a prof or a field director to ask about something which should be very simple to them, but instead you get the question turned around on you and made to look like a fool.

As far as the question regarding survey, a GPS unit loaded with the project area maps would resolve the issue of where to turn when landmarks are hard to see.  Though if the forest canopy is thick enough, it could interfere with GPS reception. While we still go into the field with topo maps. compasses, etc., GPS units have long become standard field equipment.  Many problems are solved with them.

I think everyone was trying to be genuinely helpful in this thread. Sometimes it's difficult if we don't have all the information.

How far off were you when you came out of the swampy area? 50m? 100m? 500m? 3000m? Trudging through swampy terrain can mess up anyone's pacing in a hurry, but you have to do the best you can. I wish I could see your project map and have a better idea of what you encountered.  There are often some really tough project areas to navigate through, and sometimes you have to be very creative in giving yourself something to work from in terms of landmarks, even if it is artificially imposed, like hanging up flagging tape every so often.

Having a GPS is wonderful, but nothing can replace old-school skills with a map, compass and knowing your pacing.  Ranger beads are great, but you can also improvise and put tick marks on a piece of paper if you need to.  I do have sympathy for those who survey in an area without easy landmarks.  Years ago I moved to Florida after working mostly in the northeast, and suffered field shock when I was sent out into flat, featureless cattle country.  I had topo maps, but there was really nothing to go on, as the difference in elevation from one end of the project area to another might have been 2 feet. The map might as well have been a blank piece of paper for all the help it provided (however, I will argue that any map is better than none, because at least you can visually keep track of what transects/areas you need to cover). We didn't have the benefit of a GPS, nor aerial maps, which certainly would have made life easier.  Sometimes you will have to rely on your compass and pacing, and hope for the best. There will be times when you will pop out of the swamp into an area where you didn't expect to be, but hopefully you won't be too far off (unless you are with the entire crew, and everyone forgot to pace.. yes, it happens).  Ten years ago, hardly anyone was using GPS, but nowadays I'm really surprised that your company didn't have one in the field to use at least as a backup, especially if the area was difficult to survey.

Jennifer

I'm as old school as one can be but I feel a GPS unit is indispensable. For one thing, a lot of contracts nowadays, in addition to requiring deliverables to be submitted on CD, also require all fieldwork to be defined in the field by GPS. If you have a GPS and a USGS map with UTM ticks along the margins or one of the newer ones with UTM grid lines drawn on the map, then you're all set. If you're using a blowup with the UTMs of the intended test locations penciled in, you are similarly good to go. You could even get by with a list or a schematic sketch indicating intended locations. If you know the UTMs for your starting point, turning points, and end point it's hard (but not impossible) to screw up. A cheap WAAS-enabled GPS unit, used in an area with WAAS coverage is quite accurate. 

DSRat also makes a good point.  I think every project we have don in the past 2 or 3 years has required data to be recorded by GPS.  In fact, I can't think of one were it wasn't required.

Digbot,

if your company does not have a GPS unit with the pertinent info loaded on it then you can still easily use a compass and map or aerial photos. It will take a little more time but can still be very accurate. The simplest thing to do is send two people, who are competent with a compass and reading maps, to put in a lay line/ center transect (if more than one). They will just have to use a 100m tape and their compasses to flag off the center line at specific intervals determined by the STP intervals.  This way an accurate measurement can be kept so that the waypoint for the turn to the east can be pinpointed with relative accuracy. 

GPS units definitely serve a purpose in archaeology today but I have seen several examples of when it would have been much better and more accurate to break out a compass, protractor and measuring tape. Of course that would also depend on the competence of the ones using it. Not all companies have good GPS units or someone competent enough in the field to use them properly. Each method serves its purpose in differing situations and it is important for field staff to be competent in both.

As for whether a soil horizon( commonly referred to as stratigraphic levels) is intact a general rule of thumb would be that the horizon is mostly consistent in texture and color through its entirety for the environmental areas you are excavating in. This of course is only a generality and each natural area and specific type of disturbance will create its own pattern.