Digging

Many kinds of animals engage in digging, either as part of burrowing behavior or to search for food or water under the surface of the ground.

[2] Historically, humans have engaged in digging for both of these reasons, and for a variety of additional reasons, such as engaging in agriculture and gardening, searching for minerals, metals, and other raw materials such as during mining and quarrying, preparing for construction, making fortifications and irrigation, and also excavations in archaeology, searching for fossils and rocks in palaeontology and geology and burial of the dead.

It has long been observed that humans have a seemingly instinctive desire to dig holes in the ground, manifesting in childhood.

Intentional burial, particularly with grave goods, may be one of the earliest detectable forms of religious practice since, as Philip Lieberman suggests, it may signify a "concern for the dead that transcends daily life".

[5] Evidence suggests that the Neanderthals were the first human species to practice burial behavior and intentionally bury their dead, doing so in shallow graves along with stone tools and animal bones.

A variety of grave goods were present at the site, including the mandible of a wild boar in the arms of one of the skeletons.

Borrow pits are common archaeological features in Waikato, where sand and gravel were dug to mix with clay topsoils to improve their drainage and friability,[11] to suit growth of kūmara and taro, brought by Māori from tropical islands.

[15] Historically, manual shoveling (often in combination with picking) was the chief means of excavation in construction, mining, and quarrying, and digging projects employed large numbers of people.

[1] Different methods of digging can also result in different excavation depth and force, potentially risking exposure or damage to subsurface pipelines and wiring.

In the United States and Canada, homeowners and contractors are required to notify a utility-run call center before digging to ensure they do not strike buried utilities and infrastructure.

Cave-in of an excavation is the detachment of the mass of soil in the side of the trench and its displacement into the hole, which represents a hazard to the person inside.