The wooden dining-room stuck out over the mud of the shore like a lacustrine dwelling; the planks of the floor seemed rotten; a decrepit old waiter tottered pathetically to and fro before an antediluvian and worm-eaten sideboard; the chipped plates might have been disinterred from some
kitchen midden near an inhab ited lake; and the chops recalled times more ancient still.
[A] reported case does in some ways resemble those traces of past human activity--crop marks, post holes, the footings of walls, pipe stems, pottery shards,
kitchen middens, and so forth, from which the archaeologist attempts, by excavation, scientific testing, comparison, and analysis to reconstruct and make sense of the past.