Spent 3 months trying to date a single potsherd from a site near Tucson

Turns out the stratigraphy was jumbled from an old burrowing animal den, and I kept pulling charcoal samples from the wrong layer. Has anyone else had a site totally wrecked by pack rats or gophers?

2 comments

2 Comments

stone.jesse1mo ago

Read a paper once where some archaeologist figured out pack rats had been dragging stuff up and down through layers for centuries. They basically had to toss half their radiocarbon dates and start over from scratch. Sounds about right for your situation.

brooke711mo ago

Oh man, that pack rat thing is wild... I remember volunteering on a dig in New Mexico back in like 2015 and we kept finding these random pieces of pottery way deeper than they should have been. Turned out ground squirrels were just digging tunnels and pushing stuff down, then later stuff would fall in from above. The lead archaeologist was so mad, had to re-date like three whole test pits... it took us an extra week just to sort it all out.