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My professor told me to always grid a site, even when it seems obvious
I was helping on a dig near Tucson last fall, and we were clearing what looked like a simple trash pit. I thought I could just dig straight down, but my old professor's voice kept nagging me... so I spent half a day setting up a one-meter grid. Found three distinct layers of artifacts that told a story of trade over 200 years, which we would have totally mixed up. Anyone else have a piece of advice that felt like a pain but saved a project?
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charlesanderson9d ago
Man, I feel you so hard on this one. That inner voice of a good mentor is almost always right, even when it's annoying. I had a similar moment on a survey project where my advisor made me draw every single rock feature, even the ones that looked random. Felt like a total waste of time until we got back to the lab and realized they lined up with old trail markers no one had mapped before. That extra day of work saved us from having to redo the whole survey. It's wild how the boring, tedious stuff is what actually protects the science. Isn't it funny how the worst advice to follow ends up being the best?
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Oh man, that's so true! My supervisor always said to bag every single flake, even the tiny ones. It felt silly until we pieced together a whole tool from what looked like just debris. That advice really saved our data.
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