That time I dug a test pit wrong for 6 months straight

I was working on a small site out near Fredericksburg and kept finding nothing but disturbed soil in my test pits. After about 6 months of this, a visiting archaeologist from UT asked to see my shovel technique. She watched for 2 minutes and said I was scraping instead of slicing. Apparently I was dragging the edge across instead of cutting clean sections. That was destroying the stratigraphy before I could even see it. Felt pretty dumb honestly. Has anyone else had a basic technique problem that took way too long to catch?

2 comments

2 Comments

karenm495d ago

Wait, were you not doing any kind of training or checking in with senior field staff during that time? 6 months is a long stretch to be scraping instead of slicing without anyone stepping in to correct it. Just wondering how common it is for folks to work alone like that and miss something so basic.

david_stone5d ago

Karen, 6 months without someone checking your basic technique" sounds like a management problem, not a field tech problem. If the crew chief or principal investigator isn't doing spot checks, that's on them for wasting project time and money.