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Unpopular opinion: hand digging test pits beats using a ground penetrating radar for small site surveys
I was out with a local archaeology group last Saturday on a small field near Milton. We had this guy from a university bring out a GPR unit and he spent like 2 hours calibrating it. Meanwhile, me and two other volunteers hand dug 4 test pits and found a medieval pottery shard and a buckle piece in under 3 hours. I get that tech is great for big projects but for a half acre site, sometimes the old ways just work faster. Has anyone else had better luck with manual digging over fancy gear on small sites?
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dianal943mo ago
Guy brought a ground penetrating radar to a half acre site? That's like using a microscope to find a lost sock. Bet his battery died before he even got a reading while you were already finding medieval leftovers. Reminds me of when someone tried to do drone photogrammetry over a garden patch and spent all day processing data while we just dug a trench and found Roman tile in twenty minutes.
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emmaallen3mo ago
Oh man, sounds like that GPR guy was just showing off. My back would have voted for the radar after about 20 minutes of digging though.
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