Having then made out as much as possible beforehand, we begin our diggings. If there appear to be remains of a temple, or some larger building, which should be thoroughly examined, we first make pits about one edge of the site, and find how far out the ruins extend. Having settled that, a large trench is dug along the whole of one side, reaching down to the undisturbed soil beneath, and about six or eight feet wide at the bottom, all the earth being heaped on the outer edge of the trench. Then the inner side is dug away, and the stuff thrown up on the outer side by a row of men all along the trench. Thus the trench is gradually swept across the whole site, always taking from one side, and throwing back on the other. Each block of stone or piece of building found is surveyed, and covered over again if not wanted; sculptures or inscriptions are either removed or rolled up on to the surface of the stuff, or remain exposed in pits left in the rubbish. Thus the earth does not cover over and encumber the surrounding ground, which may very likely need to be excavated in its turn; the stuff is removed a minimum distance, which means occupying a minimum of time and cost; and the site is covered over again, to preserve from the weather and from plunderers any foundations or masonry that may remain. Every ounce of earth is thus examined, and all it contains is discovered. Town ruins may be treated in the same way; all the chambers along one side of the town, or along a street, may be cleared out and measured; then the next chambers inwards are cleared, and the stuff all thrown into the first row of chambers; thus gradually turning over every scrap of rubbish without destroying a single wall, and leaving the place as well protected by its coat of _débris_ as it was before the work. The most fatal difficulty in the way of reaching what is wanted is when an early site has been occupied in later times. A city may have been of the greatest importance, and we may be certain that beneath our feet are priceless monuments; but if there are twenty or thirty feet of later rubbish over it all, the things might almost as well be in the centre of the earth. Tanis was the Hyksos capital, but it would cost tens of thousands of pounds to lay bare the Hyksos level. The town of the twelfth dynasty at Illahun, on the contrary, yielded a harvest of small objects and papyri, revealing all the products and habits of that remote time, at a cost of two or three hundred pounds; simply because it was unencumbered. The temple of Ephesos cost sixteen thousand pounds, and almost a life’s work, to discover it, owing to its depth under the surface. Naukratis and Defenneh, on the contrary, gave us the remains of the archaic Greeks, merely for the picking up and a little grubbing, both together not costing a thousand. It is plain enough that the main consideration is an accessible site.