Criticism about my dig site notes changed how I document finds

A field supervisor told me my notes were too vague after a dig in New Mexico last spring. He said I needed to include elevation data and soil color for each layer. I changed my whole recording system after that and now our site reports are way more useful.

3 comments

3 Comments

matthewmartin5d ago

Had a similar wakeup call on a site in Colorado a few years back. My notes before then were basically "found a lot of pottery in this square, looked old." Another archaeologist pointed out that without depth measurements and soil descriptions, future researchers couldn't really replicate my work. Switched to a standardized form with Munsell color codes and a basic stratigraphy sketch for each unit. Now I can look back at a dig from 2018 and know exactly what the soil looked like at 30cm versus 60cm down. Made a huge difference when we were trying to figure out site formation processes later.

eric_knight75d ago

That Colorado story reminds me of a time I was working on a site in New Mexico where the guy before me had just sketched arrows on a napkin pointing to "stuff here." Took us two weeks to figure out he meant a hearth feature that had collapsed. I ended up switching to a cheap digital caliper and a field journal with pre-labeled columns for depth and soil type, which forced me to write down the stuff I'd normally skip. Now I can't imagine going back because those numbers save me from arguing with my own memory later.

the_diana5d ago

See @matthewmartin I get the value of being thorough but you can overdo it. I've seen obsessively documented digs where the researcher spent more time writing forms than actually observing the site. Sometimes gut level field notes catch the vibe of a place better than a stack of sterile forms ever will.