Old vs new excavation methods on the same 3 acre site

I was looking back at field notes from a dig I helped on near Santa Fe back in 2009. We used hand trowels and sifting screens for everything, took like 6 months to get through one test trench. Then last year I visited a crew working the same kind of soil with ground penetrating radar and GPS mapping. They flagged 14 possible features in just two days without breaking ground. Which approach do you think gives you better data in the long run?

2 comments

2 Comments

craig.reese14d ago

Better data in the long run" is the key phrase to me. Seems like the new tech just gives you more places to dig faster, but you still gotta get your hands dirty to answer the real questions.

derekp7013d ago

Read an article in Archaeology magazine that talked about this exact thing. They found ground radar missed stuff in wet clay that hand digging caught later. So you get more targets but maybe not all the right ones.