Misread a dig site grid and spent 3 hours digging in the wrong spot in New Mexico

I was volunteering on a small excavation outside Santa Fe last spring, and I got the grid coordinates mixed up by just one letter. Instead of trench 4C, I was in 4D, which nobody had mapped yet. I dug for about 3 hours, finding nothing but rocks and a weird amount of old bottle caps. When the lead archaeologist came by, he asked what I was doing, and I showed him my notes. He just laughed and pointed me to the right spot, where I found two pottery sherds within 20 minutes. Now I triple-check every label before I even pick up a trowel. Has anyone else had a site mix-up that wasted a whole morning?

2 comments

2 Comments

nancythomas14d ago

Oh come on, losing three hours to a wrong grid isn't that bad. Plenty of real archaeology is just digging and finding nothing, so you basically did the same work either way. Those bottle caps might even tell you something about the site's more recent history if anyone bothered to log them. Plus, you learned a lesson that probably saved you way more time later, so it sounds like a win to me. Stop acting like it was some huge disaster when you ended up finding pottery right after anyway.

grantp2814d ago

Nancy's got a point here, @nancythomas. Three hours of digging in the wrong spot is still three hours of digging, and that's just part of the gig. Those bottle caps are actually kind of cool if you think about it (trash is still history, right?). The real win is you caught the mistake early and bounced back with pottery right after, which is way better than some people who'd just quit for the day.