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I finally realized I was wrecking artifacts by cleaning them right away
I was helping on a dig in New Mexico last fall, and I found this really cool piece of pottery. My first move was to grab a brush and start dusting it off, like I always did. The site lead, Dr. Chen, came over and just said, 'Stop. You're losing the story.' She pointed out that the dirt stuck to it wasn't just dirt, it could hold pollen, tiny seeds, or even residue from what was last in the pot. By cleaning it in the field, I was basically throwing away a whole lab's worth of info before anyone could study it. She showed me how to bag it with the soil matrix still attached and tag it with the exact grid number. It hit me that I'd been treating finds like trophies to clean up, not as pieces of a bigger puzzle. Has anyone else had a moment like that, where you changed a basic field habit?
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jana_scott27d ago
My buddy did that with a bone fragment and washed off possible tool marks.
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davis.ruby21d ago
Yeah that's such a real fear. It's like when you scrub a pan too hard and take off the non-stick coating, or use the wrong cleaner on an old book cover and the color just bleeds right out. Trying to fix something ends up being the thing that wrecks it for good. Makes you want to just leave stuff alone sometimes.
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