Archaeology Sorting Installation

For the Amsterdam North-South metro line station at Amsterdam Central we designed a custom sieve, sort and select installation allowing untrained archaeologists to continuously retrieve artifacts during the sinking of the station caissons.

Challenges

The technical complexity of the metro construction project meant that standard procedures for archaeological research could not be used. Working methods had to be tailored to the civil engineering programme. Archaeologists feared that the sinking of caissons for the new stations would lead to a loss of an irreplaceable bit of history of Amsterdam.

Results

Together with the civil engineers we introduced intermediate step in the soil liquifidation process that allowed the archaeologists to safely retrieve any artifact of their liking without interrupting the engineering process. This installation of sieves and display conveyor belts was a complete departure from traditional construction methods, rethought to be safe enough to allow even completely untrained people using it, while having no negative effect on the soil liquifidation process.

A great write-up on the project is on the official website: Below The Surface: The archaeological finds of the North / Southline