The old dig site I visited this summer really drove home how much excavation methods have changed.

I went back to a site in southern Utah where I volunteered back in 2012, and it looked totally different. Back then we were using hand trowels and toothbrushes for everything, spending weeks just to clear a small grid. Now they've got these portable ground-penetrating radar units that can map out a whole area in a couple days. The crew I talked to said they found three new pit houses in like two weeks using it, stuff we walked right over ten years ago. It's wild to think about how much manual labor got saved, but part of me misses the slow pace of brushing away dirt and finding something yourself. Has anyone else gone back to a site and felt like you barely recognized the whole process?

2 comments

2 Comments

mary_foster9224d ago

I get what you're saying about the slow pace being special, but I actually see it the other way. You mentioned "the slow pace of brushing away dirt" and I think that romanticizes the past too much. When I volunteered at a site in Colorado back in 2008, we spent three months digging and found almost nothing because we just didn't have the tools to know where to look. The ground-penetrating radar stuff isn't cheating, it's just smarter work. We were basically guessing before, digging blind and hoping for the best. Now they can save all that time and actually focus on the spots that matter instead of just randomly turning over dirt.

gavin69224d ago

That "digging blind and hoping for the best" line is pretty accurate. A buddy of mine spent a whole season at a site in Nevada and they barely found a few broken pots, then someone brought in a magnetometer a year later and they found an entire room block just a few feet from where they'd been camped. Made him feel like they'd been missing the forest for the trees that whole time.