As Sir Mortimer Wheeler put it: [T]he methodical digging for systematic information not with the upturning of earth in a hunt for bones of saints and giants or the armoury of heroes, or just plainly for treasure.
Apparently an archaeological site was to be excavated using arbitrary levels and then the stratigraphy was drawn in the exposed sections and the two were to be correlated in some way.
[4] Australian archaeologist John Clegg comments "Prehistoric archaeologists at Cambridge in the 1950s were taught to dig in spits if: The theoretical point was that no one can be certain of strata by just digging down with no visible/tangible changes; the first trench should always be in spits, until sections are visible (comment posted to the Ausarch discussion list May 2008).
[citation needed] The use of arbitrary levels and Wheeler's critique is discussed by American archaeologists Hester et al., where they emphasise that the technique is only justified where there is no visible stratigraphy.
[5] Another influential textbook, Hole and Heizer's An Introduction to Prehistoric Archaeology, does not overtly condemned spit excavation.