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That 4 inch square I kept skipping on a dig in southern Utah turned out to be the only spot with intact charcoal from a hearth.
I finally figured out after three seasons that I was ignoring the dark, crumbly patches because I thought they were just root rot, and a visiting geoarchaeologist pointed out the shiny edges under a hand lens; has anyone else been humbled by a simple visual clue they overlooked for years?
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hugo_jones24d ago
Dont beat yourself up too much. Visual biases are the hardest to recognize because you dont know what you're looking for until someone shows you. I spent four years walking past fire cracked rock that was just sitting on the surface because I thought it was modern road gravel. Ended up missing an entire lithic scatter. Once you get that one clue it changes everything about how you read the ground.
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nathan_foster604d ago
Nailed it. One good mentor can save you years of staring at the ground wrong.
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