When there is an archaeological find, earth has to be carefully removed to expose buried artefacts or building structures. Excluding nearby volcanic disasters, what causes a site to fill up with rubble and debris over time? Where does it come from?
• Your correspondent will find Charles Darwin’s book about earthworms, On the Formation of Vegetable Mould, both interesting and instructive. Earthworms – as well as ants, termites and other such creatures – like to remove soil from beneath objects and deposit it on the surface, so things gradually move downward.
In the past, people made their homes of mud and sticks (wattle…
