Social History Through the Urban Strata

I have just read about the Crypta Balbi in Rome. The original floor plan of the Crypta has been covered over with layers from 2000 years of urban debris, silt from the Tiber, and reuse. The layers have been excavated to make a museum of sorts of Roman history. See Geoff Manaugh's article here.
I am fascinated about this idea that one can travel through time spatially. Each one of the layers is a snapshot in time, in Rome's social/physical history. To walk through it, to see it all at once, to be able to reference and cross reference these layers with one another is not only a didactic experience, but an exercise in time travel.