Museum dig vs field dig at the old Hoxne site last month really showed me the difference

I spent a Saturday helping with a test pit at the Hoxne dig in Suffolk and compared it to a museum-trained excavation I tried back in 2019. The field team just went straight in with trowels and sieves while the museum folks insisted on laser grids and photo logs for every tiny sherd. Has anyone else found that the more controlled methods actually slow down real discovery or am I just impatient?

2 comments

2 Comments

nancygrant13d ago

The trowel and sieve approach is faster for sure, but you lose a lot of the 3D context. The laser grids are a pain but if that pot sherd is from a sealed layer it makes the difference between a dateable find and just a pretty rock.

parkera2213d ago

Well now, that brings back memories of my own dig at a Roman site in Colchester back in 2015. I had the same frustration at first with all the careful measuring and photographing. But after a few weeks, I saw why they do it that way. The controlled methods might feel slow, but they saved me later when I needed to prove a pot fragment was from a specific layer to date the whole trench. The trowel and sieve approach is fine for surface finds or when you're just prospecting, but for anything you want to publish or date, those grids are worth the time. I'd say it depends on what you're after. If you just want to find stuff and have fun, go fast. But if you want to understand the story of the site, the slow way actually pays off.