My old way of digging at a site was just wrong

For years, I'd just dig straight down in a unit, trying to get to the bottom fast. Last summer at a dig in Cahokia, the site supervisor showed me how to scrape layers off slowly with a trowel, keeping the floor level. I found a whole pottery rim piece that way, which I would have broken with my old method. Has anyone else had a basic field technique they had to unlearn?

2 comments

2 Comments

dianal948d ago

That Cahokia supervisor taught me the same slow scraping method.

owens.cameron8d ago

Man, that slow scraping thing is no joke. I had a similar wake-up call with screening dirt. Used to just dump and shake the screen like I was panning for gold, until a crew chief saw me almost send a tiny bone bead flying into the weeds. @dianal94 gets it, that Cahokia method really sticks with you. Now I gently wash the matrix through with water from my canteen, and it feels totally different. You actually see the tiny stuff instead of just blasting it all apart.