A museum curator called my trowel photo "pretty but useless" and it changed how I dig

Sage Young · 2026-10-09T17:50:02.76085+00:00

I posted a pic of a trowel sitting on a neat square of clean dirt, and a curator with 15 seasons in the field replied that it told her nothing. She asked where the soil change was, what depth, and what came out next to it. I started shooting a scale card and a north arrow in every photo, plus close ups of the wall profile at 10 cm intervals. Two weeks into a survey near Tulsa, those shots let me recheck a pit feature without driving 40 miles back. Now I spend maybe 30 extra seconds per context and my notes actually reconstruct the whole unit. Anyone else get roasted by a lab person and end up better for it?

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A museum curator called my trowel photo "pretty but useless" and it changed how I dig | Archaeology Discoveries - HW Forums