c/archaeology-discoveries

Showerthought: That time a random stranger at a dig site in New Mexico showed me the difference between a rock and an artifact

I was volunteering on a surface survey near Santa Fe about 3 years ago, just picking up anything that looked interesting. This older guy, maybe 70, walked over and held up a piece of chert. He said 'see how this one has a clear flake scar? That's not nature, that's a person taking a tool to it.' Then he handed me a similar looking rock with no marks. It was such a simple lesson but it totally changed how I see stuff on the ground now. Has anyone else had a moment where one person just explained something obvious and it clicked?

Hot take: That Roman coin I bought last month was a total fake.

I got it from a dealer at a local show in Denver, paid $80 for what I thought was a sweet denarius of Trajan. Got home and started comparing it to a real one in a reference book, and the lettering was all off. Weighed it on my kitchen scale and it was way too light. I emailed the dealer but he ghosted me. Has anyone else run into fakes at these smaller shows?

Old school stratigraphy vs modern GPS mapping - which tells the real story?

Back in 2012 on a dig in Kansas, we used nothing but trowels and a Munsell chart to read soil layers. Took us 3 weeks to figure out a midden deposit. Now with a total station and GIS, I can map a trench in an afternoon. But the old school guys say digital misses the texture and nuance. I switched fully to digital mapping in 2018 after a site in New Mexico. Does a computer really replace the feel of a trowel scrape? Anyone here stuck with the old ways and regretted it or vice versa?

That time I found a 150 year old work boot in a crawl space

Last month I was tearing out an old addition on a house in St. Louis and crawled into this tiny dirt crawl space to check the foundation. It was dark and dusty, and I kept bumping my head on these old beams. Then my hand hit something hard and I pulled out this leather boot that was basically fossilized. I took it to a local historian and she said it was from around the 1870s based on the square nails in the sole. The owner of the house said there were stories about a shoemaker living there during the Civil War era. Has anyone else ever found something old and unexpected on a job site like that?

Question about the Cahokia Mounds debate: were they a city or just ceremonial?

I was down in Collinsville, Illinois last spring checking out Monk's Mound and got into it with a professor who was saying the whole area was more like a seasonal gathering spot, not a permanent city. On the other hand, the visitor center there says it held 10,000 to 20,000 people at its peak with residential zones. Who's got the better evidence on this, the old school population estimates or the newer revisionist take?

Grave Robbing with a Metal Detector is a Bad Idea

Took my new metal detector to this old pioneer cemetery near Omaha thinking I'd find cool coins, but I kept hitting something 3 feet down. Turns out I was pinging a copper casket handle - my buddy still won't let me live it down lol. Has anyone else accidentally dug up something way too close to a burial site?

Carbon dating vs. tree rings on a dig site argument

I was at a volunteer dig in Arizona last month and got into it with this guy who swore carbon dating was the only way to go. He kept saying tree ring dating was too slow and unreliable for our site. I pushed back because we had a clear section of old pine logs that matched a known drought pattern from 1100 AD. After three days of him fighting it, the carbon results came back way off and the tree rings lined up perfect. Has anyone else dealt with people totally writing off dendrochronology?

Spent 3 hours trying to date a pottery shard before realizing I was looking at a broken flower pot from the 1980s

I picked up this shard near a creek behind my house and swore it was prehistoric based on the temper, but after comparing it with local site reports and asking a guy at the state archaeology office, it turned out to be from a cheap planter my neighbor threw out 40 years ago. Anyone else waste time on modern trash thinking it's ancient?

Hot take: the Clovis First theory still has more going for it than people admit

I was at the 2022 SAA conference in Chicago and a grad student from Arizona told me 'you're just scared to let go of the old guard's ideas.' But she couldn't explain why the Monte Verde dates (14,500 years ago) still have so much debate around the excavation methods. Has anyone else noticed how the 'pre-Clovis' crowd sometimes glosses over site contamination issues?

That $300 'professional' ground penetrating radar rental was a total bust

I paid $300 to rent a GPR unit from a shop in Denver last month for a 2 acre survey. The calibration took me 3 hours because the manual was wrong about the settings. I got home and the data files were corrupted on the SD card, lost everything I scanned. Has anyone else gotten burned by rental gear with garbage instructions?

Got burned spending $150 on a ground penetrating radar rental for a field survey

I thought I was being smart renting a GPR unit for a two day survey on a suspected burial mound site in Ohio. Paid $150 for the weekend rental from a local shop. Turns out the soil was too clay heavy and the readings were completely useless. Spent hours walking the grid and got nothing but noise. Should have just hired someone who knows how to use that thing properly. Anyone else had a rental tool just totally fail on you like that?

Finally figured out why my field notes kept smudging after 2 years of digging

I always used a regular ballpoint pen for labeling artifacts at the site near Giza. Kept wondering why my notes were unreadable after a few hours in the sun. Last week a visiting archaeologist saw me writing and pointed out I was using the wrong side of the paper. Turns out the coated side repels ink and the rough side absorbs it. Has anyone else made a dumb basic mistake like that after years in the field?

That Roman dodecahedron mystery finally clicked for me after seeing one in person at a museum in Belgium

My big pottery sorting blunder at the county dig site

So I've been volunteering at this dig near my town for about six months, mostly sorting through buckets of dirt and broken bits. I was so proud of my system for the pottery shards, separating them by color into little trays. Last week, the lead archaeologist, Dr. Miller, walked over, picked up a piece from my 'red' pile, and just said, 'That's not a pot, Kim. That's a very old, very crumbly brick fragment.' I'd been putting construction debris from the 1920s farmhouse that used to be on the land in with the actual Roman-era finds this whole time. The tip-off was the texture, she said pottery has a specific feel that brick doesn't. I felt my face get so red. Has anyone else mixed up modern junk with the real stuff for way too long before figuring it out?

Remember when we had to map a dig site by hand with string and nails?

I was looking at some old field notes from a dig near Cahokia Mounds about 15 years ago. We spent days just laying out a basic grid with string and stakes. Now, a total station or even a good GPS unit can map the same area in a couple of hours with way better accuracy. It's wild how much time that frees up for the actual digging and analysis. Anyone else miss the old methods, even if the new ones are clearly better?

Rant: I tried using a drone for a basic site survey at a dig in New Mexico and it completely changed my perspective on field mapping.

Pro tip: I used to think ground-penetrating radar was the only way to map a site before digging.

For years on digs in places like the Orkney Islands, we'd rely on GPR for everything. Now, after seeing the results from a project at Çatalhöyük, I'm a big fan of using drone-based photogrammetry first. It gives you a full 3D model of the surface features for a fraction of the cost and time, which often points you to the best spots for the more expensive GPR work. Has anyone else switched up their initial survey methods like this?

Spent a week cleaning a single Roman coin from a dig in York

When I pulled it from the dirt last month it was just a green lump, but after careful work with distilled water and a soft brush, you can now see the emperor's face. It's a small thing, but seeing that detail appear after 2,000 years is just WILD. Has anyone else had a find that looked like nothing at first but turned out amazing?

Warning: cataloging pottery shards from a single dig site took me almost 3 months

I kept finding pieces from the same broken pot scattered across different layers, which messed up my dating. Has anyone else had a single artifact throw off their whole site timeline?

Okay, I'm going against the grain on the new 'lost city' find in the Amazon

Everyone's calling it a huge city, but the paper itself says it's a network of roads and platforms, maybe for ceremonies. That's not a city like Cahokia or Tenochtitlan, it's a big garden with paths. My team spent two weeks last fall trying to map a similar 'settlement' from LiDAR data in Bolivia, and it turned out to be a natural ridge formation. Have any field archaeologists actually ground-truthed this new site yet, or are we just going with the press release?

Just read about a Roman shipwreck found off the coast of Sicily with over 300 jars still on board

Honestly, I was looking at a report from the University of Naples and it said the jars were full of garum, that fish sauce they loved. Tbh, I never realized how much of their trade was just moving that stuff around. Has anyone else come across a find that made a whole part of ancient life just click into place like that?

Vent: A site director in Jordan told me 'context is everything' after I almost bagged a sherd alone.

I was about to log a single pottery fragment from a test pit, but he made me map the entire 2-meter square first. Has anyone else had a simple find completely change their field method?

My neighbor's old jar of nails made me think about archaeology

I was helping my neighbor clean out his garage in Austin last month, and he pulled out this rusty coffee can full of bent nails and old screws. He said his granddad saved every single one from building their house in 1948. It hit me right then, that's basically a tiny dig site. We weren't just looking at junk, we were looking at the story of how that house got built, piece by piece, by a guy who didn't waste anything. It made me wonder how many stories we throw away without even knowing it. What's the most normal thing you've found that felt like a real piece of history?

Rant: I spent $80 on a metal detector for my backyard and found a 1920s soda bottle cap...

It made me realize that history is literally under our feet, even in a suburb built in the 1950s, so what's the coolest everyday object you've ever dug up?

People keep calling every old rock a 'tool' without checking for wear patterns

I've seen so many posts where someone finds a vaguely sharp stone and immediately labels it an ancient tool. The real tell is microscopic wear from use, not just shape. At a site in New Mexico, our team analyzed over 200 lithic pieces last fall, and only 37 showed actual use-wear under magnification. If you just go by looks, you'll miss the real story of how people actually used materials. Has anyone else had to correct this assumption during a field survey?