The purpose of flotation discussed in the last post is to ensure that all items in a volume of soil are recovered. However, larger objects can also be directly picked from the ground and go directly to tabbing. Throughout this whole process, tags from the site are very carefully handled to ensure that the context of any artifact is retained. This is especially true during the process of tabbing.
Laboratory work consisted of tabbing, a process wherein the resulting pieces of floted soil bags are sorted. At the Center for American Archaeology Field School, students would perform tabbing nearly every day at varying times. The artifacts we bagged were relatively similar to the ones that we excavated. Many items we were given were, in fact, from the German Site.
