The act of extracting ores or coal etc from the earth

Usage examples of excavation.

As soon as the caisson was down to its final position and the excavation was completed, concrete was deposited on the uneven rock surfaces, brought up to the line of the water-proofing, and given a smooth 1-in.

In order to resolve the controversy over the age of the eoliths, the British Association, a prestigious scientific society, financed excavations in the high-level Plateau gravels and other localities in close proximity to Ightham.

And after that I abandoned altogether the idea of escaping by excavation.

In this lame cage they were lowered into the excavation, a journey that took them through storage and maintenance areas, restricted sectors, down along porous shale and rock, past timber underpinnings and assemblies of masonry and steel that formed support for subtunnels and emergency access routes, the elevator suddenly dropping into open air, free of its shaft, cabling into the darkness of the inverted cycloid, air currents, oscillation, a bucketing descent through drainage showers and rubble-fall, the cage shaking so badly that Billy sought to convince himself there was a pattern to the vibrations and changes of speed, a hidden consistency, all gaps fillable, the organized drift of serial things passing to continuum.

And so it remained, out of sight and out of mind, until the beginning of the twentieth century, when the archaeologists Flinders Petrie and Margaret Murray began excavations.

The exact position and dimensions of the excavation were relayed to the icebreakers and the Hawkbill, then the containment booms were slowly cinched together with agonizing slowness to avoid losing any portion of the trapped surface water.

Storms on the Mediterranean made a return to Rome inadvisable, work on the Sepulchre had become almost impossible, and when I developed a racking cough that worsened my usual winter breathing problems, Bishop Eusebius suggested that I move down to Jericho, where it was warmer, while he stayed to watch over the excavation.

As soon as they arrived on a planet the Nastic turned its indigenous population over to excavation projects.

But the most important finds have been at Niffer, the ancient Nippur, in Northern Babylonia, where the American expedition has brought to a close its long work of systematic excavation.

We were afraid of him, but we felt that some man had to know, if only to stop Poachy from continuing his excavations.

As Sixsmith said, I wanted to hire someone to prevent the unrest among navvies regarding safety, and stop the toshers, whose territories were disappearing, from becoming violent and disrupting the excavations.

A lark sang, a faint breeze lifted the long grass and in the excavation below the wapentake, sand and gravel fell with a whisper of sound from the grassy overhang.

Yet his excavations have drawn considerable interest in antiquarian circles.

We had bribed a bulldozer operator to scoop out a room-sized excavation, then move the hootch over it so we could enter it without leaving the building.

Later, Masin had helped Malipieri to escape, had followed him into exile, and had been of the greatest use to him during the excavations in Carthage, where he had acted as body- servant, foreman, and often as a trusted friend.