I was stuck on a dig site grid for hours until I tried a different soil layer approach

At the Cahokia Mounds site, we kept hitting sterile soil in one quadrant and thought we'd found nothing. My professor suggested we treat each 10cm level as its own unit instead of digging by arbitrary depth. We found a Mississippian pottery shard at 35cm that we would have missed. Has anyone else had a grid square that looked empty but wasn't?

2 comments

2 Comments

nelson.finley2d ago

Wait, you were digging by arbitrary depth before? That's wild! I can't believe your whole team almost walked away from a Mississippian piece over a method choice. Changing to 10cm levels seems so basic, but it makes all the difference. That shard at 35cm is proof you just never know what's hiding.

mason.paige1d ago

Arbitrary depth? That's crazy.