c/archaeology-discoveries

My brother told me to always bring a trowel on a dig, and he was right

I was helping on a survey in Arizona last fall and forgot mine. Ended up trying to carefully uncover a small ceramic piece with a stick and my hands for an hour. What's the one piece of gear you'd never leave behind?

Question about identifying pottery shards from a dig site near Tucson

I was sorting through a box of what looked like plain brown pottery fragments from a site near Tucson, and after three hours of getting nowhere, I tried holding each piece under a strong desk lamp at a low angle, which suddenly made the faintest fingerprint impressions and cord markings visible, so what other simple lighting tricks have you found for spotting details on artifacts?

I used to think all pottery shards were just broken junk, but a dig in New Mexico changed that

For years, when I saw a piece of old pottery, I just saw a broken thing. Then, about two summers ago, I volunteered on a dig at a Pueblo site near Santa Fe. The lead archaeologist showed us how to look at the curve of a single piece to guess the whole pot's size and shape. She even pointed out a tiny fingerprint in the clay from the person who made it, maybe 800 years ago. Now I see every fragment as a clue, not just trash. It's amazing what a single piece can tell you about daily life back then. Has anyone else had a find that totally flipped how you see a common artifact?

PSA: My site grid in Turkey got washed out by a flash flood

We were digging near Antalya and a sudden storm filled our trenches with mud and rocks. Had to spend two days just cleaning it out before we could even look at the pottery shards we'd found, anyone else had a dig site get wrecked by weather?

My trowel snapped clean in half at the Cahokia dig site yesterday

Was working on a unit near Monks Mound, scraping away. Heard a loud crack and my Marshalltown 4-inch blade just gave out. Had to finish the afternoon using my backup, a cheap hardware store one. Anyone else have tools fail at the worst possible moment?

Unpopular opinion: A curator in Boston told me my artifact photos were 'flat' and it changed my whole process.

He said I needed to shoot with a side light to show texture, so now I use a simple LED panel at an angle. Anyone have other tips for making small finds look 3D in pictures?

I heard a guide at the Pompeii site say something that really bugged me...

He was telling a group that the plaster casts of the victims are the most important find there. I get why they're moving, but I think that's wrong. The real story is in the graffiti on the walls, the everyday stuff people left behind. Those casts just show the end, not how they lived. Does anyone else feel like we focus too much on the dramatic parts of a dig?

Appreciation post: Finally got to see the real color of that Roman concrete sample

I keep seeing people online say Roman concrete was just gray, like ours. But I got to handle a piece from a dig site near Pompeii last year, and it's not just gray. It has these tiny flecks of red and black from the volcanic ash they used, and it almost looks speckled up close. The guide said the mix was specific to the area because they used local stuff, which is why concrete from other places looks different. It matters because when you see a picture labeled 'Roman concrete' and it's plain gray, you're missing a key detail about their local building methods. I took a bunch of photos with my macro lens to show the texture, and it's wild how much detail you can see. Has anyone else noticed regional color differences in old building materials like that?

Had to choose between a dig in Greece or a lab job in Boston. I picked the lab, and honestly, it was the best call for my career.

PSA: The site at Cahokia Mounds looks totally different now than it did five years ago

I visited the main plaza area back in 2019 and it was mostly just open grass with a few signs. Went back last month and they've added full-scale reconstructions of several houses and a big new interpretive center right on the spot. It's because of a huge grant and years of new digs that showed exactly where things were. Honestly, it feels a bit like a theme park now instead of letting you imagine it. Has anyone else been lately and felt the same way?

A volunteer at a dig in Flagstaff showed me a tiny obsidian flake I almost missed

We were sifting through a unit near an old pueblo site, and I was about to toss a small bit of dirt when she stopped me and pointed out a nearly black flake the size of a fingernail. She explained it was likely a tool-making leftover from over 800 years ago, which made me look at every handful of soil completely differently. Do you have a story about a small find that taught you a big lesson?

I thought the 'Roman dodecahedron' finds were just hoaxes for years

Kept seeing those weird bronze objects with knobs and holes pop up in England and France, always figured they were fake. Then I read the full report from the Norton Disney dig last year where they found one in a sealed pit with 4th century coins. The context was too solid to ignore. Has anyone else had a find they were sure was nonsense turn out to be real?

Shoutout to the team that kept digging at the old Roman fort site near Hadrian's Wall

Everyone said the main camp was found, but they kept looking for three more months. They just found a whole new section of barracks a hundred meters out, proving the fort was way bigger. How often do you think we call a site 'done' too early?

Vent: The day I dropped a 4,000 year old pot in the Jordan Valley

We were on a dig near Jericho, cataloging finds from a Bronze Age house floor. My hands were numb from the morning chill, and I was moving a small storage jar to the cleaning station. It slipped. Just a plain brown pot, but intact. Hit the edge of the table and shattered into maybe fifteen pieces. My stomach dropped. The site director just stared for a full ten seconds. We spent the next four hours on our knees, using tweezers and brushes to collect every single fragment. Got them all, I think. The conservator back at camp said she could fix it, but the stress lines will always show. Ever had a find just fall apart in your hands?

Shoutout to the team at the Cahokia dig site for letting me try their new ground-penetrating radar unit last month, because my first scan over what looked like a regular field edge near Mound 72 showed a massive, unexpected void pattern about 15 feet down that could be a whole new structure.

Has anyone else had a GPR reading that looked too good to be true, and how did you verify it without disturbing the site?

Tried to clean a Roman coin with cola, got a science fair volcano

Found a crusty old coin in a field near Hadrian's Wall last fall, figured it was Roman. Watched a video where a guy said a soak in cheap cola could clean it. Left the coin in a bowl of store brand cola overnight. Woke up to a fizzy brown mess all over my kitchen counter. The coin looked worse, covered in a sticky black gunk. My partner walked in and asked if I was doing a grade school volcano project. Learned that cola's acid can eat metal if you leave it too long, not just the dirt. Anyone know a safe way to clean a coin that's mostly just dirt and not much detail left?

Spent $60 on a 'professional' metal detector for a dig and it was basically a toy

I got excited for a volunteer dig in Ohio and bought this cheap detector online... it kept beeping at every tiny piece of modern trash. The team lead took one look and said, 'You'd have better luck with a sieve.' I wasted a whole morning digging up pull tabs and a rusty nail. Has anyone found a decent budget detector that actually works for field walking?

Was helping with a dig near Tucson and the lead archaeologist told me to always check the spoil pile twice.

Found a tiny turquoise bead everyone else walked past. How many small finds get missed like that?

Spent $200 on a drone for site surveys and it paid off big time

I was working on a dig in a remote part of New Mexico last fall, mapping a large surface scatter. The budget was tight, but I put about $200 into a basic drone with a decent camera. In two flights, we got a full aerial map that would have taken our team a week to grid and plot by hand. We spotted a linear feature in the images that turned out to be a previously unknown wall foundation. Without that overhead view, we would have missed it completely. Has anyone else used consumer drones for field mapping, and what model did you find most reliable?

I spent three years carefully brushing dirt off what I thought was a Roman floor mosaic, only to realize yesterday it was just a weirdly patterned concrete slab from the 1970s.

Update: I chose to dig a test pit instead of using ground radar on a site in Arizona

We had a tight budget for a survey near Tucson, so I had to pick between renting a GPR unit for a day or just putting in a small test pit by hand. I went with the pit, thinking it was a gamble. After about three hours of careful digging, we hit a layer of worked stone flakes right at 70 centimeters down. It was a clear sign of old tool making, which totally changed how we planned the full dig. Has anyone else had a good result from skipping the tech and just getting your hands dirty on a hunch?

Hot take: I used to think ground-penetrating radar was just a fancy gimmick for big-budget digs.

I was on a site in New Mexico last year mapping a pueblo ruin, and we spent two full days just digging test pits based on surface scatter. Then a university team rolled in with a GPR unit and found a whole new room layout in about 4 hours. I was wrong, it's a total game changer for seeing what's under you before you even break ground. Anyone else had their mind changed by a specific piece of tech in the field?

Showerthought: I used to think ground-penetrating radar was just a fancy gimmick for big-budget digs.

I was helping on a local dig in Tucson last month, cataloging surface finds. The lead archaeologist brought in a GPR unit, and I rolled my eyes, thinking it was a waste of time and money compared to traditional test pits. We spent a morning doing test pits in a grid and found almost nothing. Then we ran the GPR over the same area. In about an hour, it clearly showed a buried adobe wall foundation and a cluster of anomalies about 80 cm down. We excavated right on the spots it marked and hit the features immediately. The test pits would have taken us weeks of random guessing to find that. It completely changed my view on non-invasive tech. For a site with limited time and budget, which method actually saves more resources in the long run?

Unpopular opinion: I think we're wrong about the purpose of those stone circles in northern Scotland.

A professor from Edinburgh told me over coffee that we're too focused on ritual and ignoring the practical evidence of seasonal herding patterns found at the site, which has stuck with me for years.

My professor said to always double-check the grid squares, and today it paid off

During a dig in southern Utah three years ago, my old field school professor told me, 'Never trust the first pass, always check your grid twice.' I was working a new site yesterday and almost logged a unit as empty after the first sweep. I went back over it like he said and found a tiny obsidian flake in the corner of square B4. It was maybe 2 centimeters long and totally easy to miss. That little piece changes our whole idea of tool use in that area. Has anyone else had a simple piece of advice save a find from being overlooked?