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Why does nobody mention that wet sieving beats dry sifting on clay heavy dig sites
I spent two full field seasons at a site outside Tucson dry sifting every bucket and pulling maybe 3 tiny flakes a day while the pottery guy next to me kept finding beads. Ran out of screen space one afternoon so I dumped a bucket into a tub of water and the clay just melted off, and suddenly there were 11 shell beads and a bone needle sitting in the bottom. Now I screen everything from those units wet, even though it's slower and my boots stay soaked. The dry method was literally hiding the small stuff from us for years. Does anyone else switch methods based on soil type or am I just late to this?
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sarah6873d ago
Wet sieving definitely recovers more in heavy clay, no argument there. But calling dry sifting useless is a stretch. Some sites have great preservation and dry screening works fine, and you can process way more dirt in a day. The real trick is reading your soil before you commit to one method for the whole site. Sounds like your units just happened to be the clay heavy ones, which is why the beads showed up once you switched.
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