Overheard an archaeologist at a coffee shop in Boston last week

She said most people dig too fast and miss the small stuff like bone fragments or seed impressions. I've been guilty of rushing myself on digs, anyone else slow down and find more after hearing something like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

parkerb7526d ago

Took a trowel and a sieve to a site last summer and started going way slower than everyone else... found a tiny fish vertebra that was probably from a ritual offering. That archaeologist's right, the rush makes you blind to the stuff that actually tells you how people lived. I started using a dental pick for the first few inches of soil and that changed everything. Seed impressions especially are easy to miss if you're not scanning each bucket of dirt with a magnifier. Just slow your hand speed by half and you'll start seeing things you'd normally walk right over.

webb.christopher26d ago

Is it really that serious though? I mean finding a fish vertebra is cool and all, but how many of those tiny little things are actually going to tell you something meaningful about how people lived vs. just being a random tiny bone that got mixed in there somehow? In my experience, you spend that much time on every square inch and you'll never finish a site in your lifetime. I get that rush jobs miss stuff, but there's gotta be a middle ground between bulldozing through and picking at every grain of dirt with a dental pick. Most seed impressions and micro remains get lost in the sieve anyway unless you're wet screening everything, which nobody has time for. I'd rather cover more ground and get the big picture than obsess over a handful of tiny details that might not even be that important. Just my two cents, your mileage may vary.