Loading…
16
Misread a dig site for 2 seasons until a volunteer asked one question
I've been helping at the Gault site in Texas on weekends for a while. I always assumed the dark soil layer meant older artifacts, so I kept sorting everything that way. Then a new volunteer pointed out the creek bed nearby likely shifted and redeposited stuff in reverse order. She was right, I had about 40% of my catalogued flakes labeled wrong. Has anyone else relied on a soil color shortcut that ended up being totally backwards?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
mila4053h ago
That volunteer basically saved your whole catalog, and honestly the creek bed thing gets even messier the more you dig into it. Water does not just flip stuff once, it can move the same flakes around every time it floods, so you end up with layers that look sorted but are really just whatever the last big rain dropped there. That means soil color alone is basically useless as a date marker in any spot with moving water nearby, even when it looks calm now. The real fix is checking the flakes themselves, stuff like edge wear and how sharp they are, cause freshly moved pieces and pieces sitting in place for thousands of years wear down very differently. So your 40% might even be on the low side if the creek came through more than once.
2