Hot take: the volunteer at a dig near Tucson told me to put my trowel down and it was the best call anyone made all season

Christopher West · 2026-10-19T12:45:05.403383+00:00

Two summers back I was on a small survey crew outside Tucson, and I was bulldozing through a unit trying to hit sterile soil before lunch. A retired volunteer named Ray, maybe 70 years old, came over and just said "put the trowel down and sit with this layer for 10 minutes." I was annoyed. I had done 40 shovels that morning and wanted to be done. But I sat there, and after about 5 minutes I started seeing the faint edge of a pit house floor that I would have sliced clean through with another pass. We ended up recording a hearth and a scatter of flakes that the lead said was one of the better finds of the season. Ray never gave me a lecture, he just stood there drinking his coffee and watching. I still think about that every time I catch myself rushing a level. How do you all handle the pressure to move fast when the good stuff is usually hiding right where you want to skip ahead?

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Hot take: the volunteer at a dig near Tucson told me to put my trowel down and it was the best call anyone made all season | Archaeology Discoveries - Topic Shares