The time I spent 3 days digging in the wrong spot near Flagstaff

Back in 2005, I was working on a survey near Flagstaff, Arizona, and I spent nearly 72 hours digging test pits in an area that looked promising based on old maps. Turns out, a rancher had moved a bunch of rocks around in the 1940s, and I was chasing his debris pile instead of any real site. Nowadays, I always check with local landowners first and use ground-penetrating radar before I break ground. Has anyone else wasted time on false leads like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

grantf731mo ago

I did something similar back in Utah once. Spent two full afternoons digging near a dry creek bed because I saw old glass and ceramic pieces poking out, only to find out later it was just a 1960s trash dump someone buried.

morgan8981mo ago

Those soda bottles and mason jar fragments, were they just scattered on the surface or buried in a pretty defined layer? I've always wondered if those old dumps people find have any pattern to them or if it's just random junk tossed in a hole. The ceramic pieces especially, were they mostly broken plates or were there some intact pieces too? I guess the real question is, did you keep anything from that dig or just fill it all back in and walk away?

the_nathan20d ago

Old trash dumps can be a trap if you don't dig a test hole first to see how deep that junk goes. The glass and ceramic pieces are usually scattered in one layer maybe a foot or two down, not buried real deep like a proper site. Intact plates are rare in those dumps because people usually broke stuff before tossing it, but whole soda bottles pop up once in a while if the pile wasn't smashed by a bulldozer later on. I kept one cool clear bottle from a similar wasted dig near Kingman, figured it at least made a decent story to tell over beers.