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Sat through a dig talk in Tucson and finally got why context beats pretty finds
I went to a free lecture at the Arizona State Museum in Tucson about a month ago, mostly because my friend bailed and I had nothing else going on that Thursday. The archaeologist walked us through a 1,200 year old Hohokam pit house and said something that stuck with me, that a plain broken pot on the floor tells you more than a shiny whole one in a display case. She showed a slide of two rooms and asked us which one had the fire, and it was the one with cracked rocks and ash, not the one with the nice bowl. I had always thought digging was about finding treasure, and now I look at every artifact story differently and wonder what got left out. Does anyone here have a site where the boring stuff turned out to be the actual discovery?
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andrew69315d ago
Did you ever dig somewhere where the trash turned out to be the whole story? I used to be all about the arrowheads and pottery, like if it wasnt pretty it wasnt worth picking up. Then I worked a site in the Southwest where the best thing we found was a bunch of fire cracked rock and some tiny seeds in a trash pit. That pit told us when people were there, what they ate, and how they cooked, stuff a fancy bowl in a case never could. Now I get excited over ash layers and broken tools, which sounds weird but its true. The flashy stuff is nice but the boring stuff is what actually talks.
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