My 1st Archaeology Dig – A Layman’s Perspective

Day one of the two days I was assigned to on this dig, was rained out. I was anxious to go and therefore disappointed with the timing of the rain.
We needed the rain. It’s been dry in the Tucson area this year.

Our Crew leaders, Tom, Lewis, Leslie and Jay. An important meeting?

After raining off and on all night, the morning of day two was clear with a lemony yellow sun rise. It was a forty-five minute drive to Archaeology Southwest’s main office, our rendezvous point for a car pool to the site.
From what I understand, the whole reason for this dig, and other digs this year, is to determine where the extent of the Salado era of migration got to. If Salado sherds are found here, then another dig will be done at another site further West. If no sherds are found, then the previous site (the Tucson basin) would be the furthest West they came.
Lewis is the head honcho and organizer. He is doing this as graduate work towards his doctorate degree.

Arrival

After about a 35 mile drive Southwest of Tucson, and another 9 miles drive over dirt roads, we arrived at the site. Eight volunteers, four students, and the main guy, Lewis.

Setting Up.

The volunteers were teamed up in groups of two and assigned to a student supervisor. My crew mate was Paul, a retired teacher from the Twin Cities. Paul, being a fellow Minnesotan, with a lot each other could relate to, and I got along immediately. Our supervisor was Leslie, a neat young lady with a lot of spirit.
The first thing we did was to haul all of our equipment out into the field. I’ve never seen most of the stuff we took. So, I can’t tell what it was. I do know we took buckets, sawhorses, shovels, rakes – the manual labor things. I know that stuff!

Paul, Stringing our site. The string defines the boundaries of the hole.

My partner, Paul has donated several hundred of volunteer hours doing this type of work. In recent years, he attended many classes related to archaeology. He can talk the language. He started stringing our site right away - while, I was still wondering what ‘stringing’ meant.

Paul was on the shovel and I was on the screen. We traded duties back and fourth during the day. That was my primary job, either shoveling or screening.

Boy, talk about a beautiful setting to work in. We were in a large box canyon with rugged mountains jutting out of a flat plane on three sides. I can see why people settled here. I wouldn’t mind a house here either! It was about 65 degrees, a slight breeze, and periodic sun. Perfect for this type of work.

After screening the pit to a predetermined depth, artifacts were sorted and bagged.

We found artifacts right away. All kinds of sherds and stone chips. These were sorted and bagged for later lab analysis. Most of the sherds were so coated with calcium and caked on caliche that field identification of their specifics was too tough to do.

Get those edges square!

Doing the math. Bagging samples.

Have you ever wondered why pits are so neat with right angled corners? Me too. The big answer is, volume. By keeping the pit as square as possible, an accurate measurement of volume can be made. Now they can do a count of how many artifacts per cubic meter was found, for example. Or send a bag of soil to the lab for pollen counts per cubic meter, and so on.

Lunch in the dirt.

We broke for lunch. The morning went so fast. While we were working away, Lewis gave a site tour to some VIPs who drove out. The Deputy Director, Linda Pierce, and several large donors walked the area, chatted and asked questions.
After lunch, the morning routine repeated. We dug a second pit after Leslie declared our first pit was no longer producing – a sterile pit.
Here are some of the cool things we found:

A turquoise bead.

A partial point.

Another point.

We also found a few fragments of shell bracelets. It’s too bad I didn’t get a pic of them. Oh yeah, another crew found a bone. I wasn’t allowed to take a pic of it. It’s culturally too sensitive to do so, should it prove to be an ancient human’s.
It wasn’t long before the declaration came to clean up and get ready to leave. When a pit is finished, it is formally closed. We left ours open for another crew to continue on.

Close of a Pit.

I felt good physically. I helped another crew fill in their hole. It wasn’t long before my partner Paul, pitched in. Then the crew we were helping vanished. We ended up filling their hole with our labor. (I have to make a mental note of this trick).  I no longer felt as good physically.
I left the house before 7:00 am. I arrive home after 7:45 pm. Almost a 13 hour day. But a fun one! I believe there was a Miller Light in my future this night!