I spent 6 months digging test pits wrong until a retired archaeologist watched me work

He pointed out I was using a trowel like a knife instead of scraping horizontally, and suddenly all my soil layers made sense - has anyone else had a basic technique they got completely backward for ages?

3 comments

3 Comments

bell.taylor15d ago

Huh, so you were basically scraping away your own data for half a year?

river_bailey215d ago

Wait, so you were basically destroying your own crime scene?

simon_wood7215d ago

Scraping away your own data for half a year" - yeah that pretty much sums it up. Before someone showed me the right way, I was digging like I was carving a turkey. I'd stab at the dirt with the trowel point first, thinking I was being precise. Ended up mixing all the different soil layers together in a big muddy mess. Once I switched to scraping flat and slow, I could actually see the color changes in the dirt. Made me feel pretty stupid but at least I fixed it before I ruined a whole site.