I finally drove 2 hours to see a museum dig site and the volunteer told me to bring a garden trowel, which was the best silly advice ever

Richard West · 2026-10-05T03:05:04.807957+00:00

So back in April I drove out to a small dig near Council Grove, Kansas, mostly because a friend said they let regular people help screen dirt for a few hours. The volunteer coordinator, a retired mailman named Dale, looked at my backpack full of snacks and said, just bring a garden trowel and old knees, that is all you need. I thought he was joking. Turns out the fancy archaeology tools on TV are mostly for show. We spent 3 hours pulling tiny flakes of chert and one busted piece of a stone tool out of a bucket of mud, and the trowel did all the real work. My knees hated me by lunch. Dale also said the site was a camp spot people used off and on for maybe 800 years, which is wild to think about while you are sitting on a bucket eating a sandwich. Has anyone else done one of these public dig days, and did they make you screen dirt too or was mine just the boring one?

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I finally drove 2 hours to see a museum dig site and the volunteer told me to bring a garden trowel, which was the best silly advice ever | Archaeology Discoveries - Thought Shares