Used to think any old shovel was fine for digging, then my trowel broke at a dig near Tucson
I spent my first two field seasons in college using whatever shovel the site had lying around, and I never gave it a second thought until my trowel snapped in half on a hard caliche layer outside Tucson last spring. After that I started carrying my own marshalltown and a small pointing trowel, and the amount of pottery I could lift out without nicking it went way up. Does anyone else have a tool they swear by after a bad day in the field, like a specific trowel or screen size?