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Vent: That professor who said 'never dig without a grid' saved my project
I was digging a test pit in a field near Sedona last spring and thought I could skip setting up a full grid. My professor from two years ago kept yelling in my head about how you miss everything without one. Sure enough, I found a broken piece of pottery, but since I had the grid ready, I marked exactly where it was at 2.3 meters west and 1.1 meters north. Without that grid, I never would have noticed the full hearth outline that showed up 3 inches down. Anyone else had an old teacher's rules come back to help you on a real dig?
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lewis.finley1mo agoMost Upvoted
Grids are overrated for small test pits honestly. I’ve done dozens of digs in the Southwest and found plenty of stuff just by pacing it out and marking a rough spot on a map. You got lucky that hearth showed up three inches down but a lot of the time you dig down six inches and there's nothing but gravel. Your professor's rule works for big sites with multiple layers but for a quick check in Sedona it’s overkill. Plus grids take forever to set up and you waste half a day when you could be digging.
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lewis.finley1mo agoMost Upvoted
oh man totally feel you on that. i did a little survey out near moab a couple years back and spent like three hours just pegging out a grid on a dry wash. ended up finding a cool flake scatter like five feet outside the grid lines anyway. after that i just started walking the area slow and marking anything that looked off with gps on my phone. got way more done in a day and found a whole little roasting pit that way. grids feel like something you do to impress your advisor not to actually find stuff. plus half the time you're fighting cactus and rocks trying to get a string straight.
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dakota4151mo agoProlific Poster
yeah grids are basically just a fancy way to make sure your advisor doesn't ask why you missed the one interesting rock in a hundred foot radius. i've spent more time untangling measuring tape from juniper bushes than actually digging. at this point i just set a timer and if i haven't found anything in twenty minutes i move on, saves me the shame of showing up empty handed to lab meeting.
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