Serious question, why do we keep treating this 6,000 year old Peruvian site like the excavation methods from the 1970s still apply?

Honestly, I used to follow the old approach of just digging fast to get artifacts out, but after seeing a preservation report from a 2018 dig at Caral that showed 30% structural damage from those methods, I switched to using micro-stratigraphy and a 3D scanner for everything, has anyone else had to fight a senior archaeologist over their insistence on using shovels instead of trowels on dry sand layers?

2 comments

2 Comments

reese1772d ago

The real issue is nobody talks about how even high tech scanners can mess up if the ground has any moisture left in it we had a team in Nazca who fried a sensor because the layer looked dry but had trapped humidity. That older gear might be rough but at least it didn't short out and brick the whole season's data. Sometimes the old guys are stubborn for a reason you dont learn testing your toys on the clock.

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sean_foster521d ago

Bricking an entire season's data off one sensor short? That sounds more like bad backup habits than a gear problem. Most teams I've seen run redundant logs and checkpoints so a single fried unit doesn't tank everything. Plus, old gear fails too, just usually from outdated parts or cables rotting in the sun, not moisture. Seems like someone skipped the basic prep work and blamed the tech. Moisture in dirt is like, Archaeology 101 stuff, nobody gets surprised by that unless they're rushing.