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TIL a field survey beat a museum trip for dating a site
I had to choose between joining a field survey crew or just visiting the museum to figure out a pottery timeline. Picked the survey, walked 3 miles along the Mississippi, and found a celt that changed the whole context. Has anyone else gotten more from walking a site than from looking at labeled artifacts?
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tyler618d ago
That 3 mile walk sounds like exactly how it should work. I did something similar down on the Arkansas side of the river a few years back, maybe 2018 or so. The museum had everything sorted by period and site name, all neat and clean. But out in the field, I found a broken point stuck in a bank that had been washed out by a flood. The color of the chert matched a type they said was local, but the museum had it labeled as trade material from further south. So either the museum was wrong or I was wrong, but you don't get that kind of puzzle from looking at glass cases.
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