Warning: Spent 6 hours digging for a pot sherd that was right next to my boot

I was out on a CRM survey in New Mexico last spring and got a strong signal on the ground penetrating radar. Figured I finally found a buried feature after two days of nothing. Dug a whole meter square pit down to 40 cm before I realized the target was just a big chunk of broken pottery sitting on the surface. My crew lead still brings it up every time we go back to that site. Has anyone else had a false alarm that wasted hours of field work?

3 comments

3 Comments

shanec6115d ago

Six hours is a lot but that's just how fieldwork goes sometimes. Had a buddy spend three days digging a pit for what turned out to be a rusted tractor part. You live and learn.

barbara_jenkins6614d ago

Agree completely. That's the thing about this kind of work, you never really know what you're gonna find until you're elbow deep in it. Six hours feels like forever when it's just a hunch, but you gotta trust your gut sometimes. Better to dig a few hours for nothing than to walk away from something real. And that tractor part story, oof, I bet he learned pretty quick to check for metal before sinking a whole weekend into a hole. It's all part of the game.

robinp8914d ago

The whole thing reminds me of how we treat everything like it's a sure thing until it isn't. My neighbor spent two weekends building a fancy raised garden bed, bought all the soil and seeds, then found out the spot had a underground pipe he hit with the first shovel. Had to tear half of it down and start over. Nobody checks for that stuff because we just assume the ground is empty. It's funny how much time we waste on things that look solid from the outside but turn out to be tractor parts or pipes or just plain nothing. The pattern is that everyone has to learn the same lesson the hard way.