Remember when we thought that Roman mosaic in York would be fully mapped in a month?

The water table kept shifting the pieces, so cataloging the whole floor pattern took us almost two full field seasons. Anyone else have a dig that got way more complicated because of one stubborn environmental factor?

3 comments

3 Comments

jordan90312h ago

Oh man, that reminds me of a survey job in a forest where the leaf litter depth changed by like a foot overnight after a big wind. We spent two days just trying to find our own grid markers again (it was a whole thing). You can plan for rain, but you can't plan for the entire forest floor to rearrange itself.

john6502d ago

Yeah, I used to think careful planning could solve anything on site. Then I spent a summer chasing a moving spring line that kept flooding our trench. It really teaches you that nature just does not care about your schedule.

milessmith2d ago

That sounds like a brutal summer. How many days did you lose before you changed the whole plan? I've seen a crew waste a week trying to fight a small seep instead of just putting in a bigger pump.