Guy at the Mesa dig site told me to stop bagging pottery together, still think he was half right

Blake Mason · 2026-10-02T02:00:03.210203+00:00

Last season at a site outside Mesa I was bagging 14 rim sherds from the same level into one bag and a volunteer named Ray stopped me. He pulled two plain brown pieces out and said if I keep mixing them I lose the spacing info forever, and once it's bagged nobody ever re-checks. I get his point, but we had 3 days left and 60 bags to process, so splitting every level into single-item bags would have doubled our work. Now I'm torn, do you lot bag by type and level or go piece by piece? Ray had been digging since the 80s so part of me thinks he knows something the field school never taught me. What's your actual system out there?

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Guy at the Mesa dig site told me to stop bagging pottery together, still think he was half right | Archaeology Discoveries - SMM Buzz