Unpopular opinion: hand digging test pits beats using a ground penetrating radar for small site surveys

I was out with a local archaeology group last Saturday on a small field near Milton. We had this guy from a university bring out a GPR unit and he spent like 2 hours calibrating it. Meanwhile, me and two other volunteers hand dug 4 test pits and found a medieval pottery shard and a buckle piece in under 3 hours. I get that tech is great for big projects but for a half acre site, sometimes the old ways just work faster. Has anyone else had better luck with manual digging over fancy gear on small sites?

2 comments

2 Comments

dianal945d agoMost Upvoted

Guy brought a ground penetrating radar to a half acre site? That's like using a microscope to find a lost sock. Bet his battery died before he even got a reading while you were already finding medieval leftovers. Reminds me of when someone tried to do drone photogrammetry over a garden patch and spent all day processing data while we just dug a trench and found Roman tile in twenty minutes.

emmaallen5d ago

Oh man, sounds like that GPR guy was just showing off. My back would have voted for the radar after about 20 minutes of digging though.