Archeologists have gotten increasingly better at reading the dirt. Over time, they’ve learned to pull more and more data from smaller and smaller samples of Earth.
A technique called microstratigraphy pushes that concept to the limit. It allows archeologists to detect miniscule traces of human and animal presence that conventional excavation techniques may have missed.
Although not considered a new methodology, a team applied it to a site in Southeast Asia and reconstructed the ground conditions in the Tam Pà Ling cave site in northeastern Laos between 52,000 years and 10,000 years ago in an article published in Quaternary Science Reviews.
