Shoutout to the old guard who still hand-draw site grids before digging

I used to rely totally on GPS for laying out test pits on a dig in New Mexico last spring. But after the signal kept drifting in a canyon, the lead archaeologist made us switch to a tape measure and compass method. I mean, it felt archaic at first, but we actually caught more subtle features because we were moving slower and double-checking everything. Now I'm wondering if we lean too hard on tech for dirt work. Has anyone else had a site where old school surveying saved the day?

2 comments

2 Comments

skyler_anderson651mo ago

...and honestly nobody's talking about how dragging a tape through the brush actually forces you to read the landscape instead of just staring at a screen. GPS tells you where the grid is, sure, but it doesn't tell you there's a subtle rise or a patch of darker soil that might mean something. I've seen crews punch in coordinates and walk right past surface artifacts because their eyes were glued to a tablet. Tape and compass work is slower but it also makes you look down and around, not just at a blinking dot on a map.

joseph_coleman1mo ago

Hold up, tape measures and compasses aren't really "old school" archaeology, that's just standard field survey gear. Why would anyone dig test pits without a baseline and grid stakes?