A grad student basically told me my site sketches were useless

I was working on a dig in New Mexico last summer, mapping a pueblo room block. I'd been making these neat, clean sketches of the walls we uncovered. A grad student from the university team looked at my notebook and said, 'But where are the rocks?' I mean, I had the outline, but she pointed out I wasn't drawing the individual stones or their shapes, which tells you about building phases. I changed my method that same day, spending an extra 20 minutes per unit to draw each major stone. The next week, it actually helped us spot a later repair in the wall that the clean sketch would have missed. Has anyone else had a simple piece of feedback completely shift how they record in the field?

3 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

3 Comments

faithgonzalez7mo ago

That grad student feedback is so real. My first field school I was just drawing straight lines for walls until someone showed me how to show tumble and collapse. Totally changed what we could see later.

7

brown.willow7mo ago

What pueblo site were you at?

3

nora_bennett727mo ago

Was it Mesa Verde you went to, brown.willow? I was just at Bandelier last month and it blew my mind. Climbing up into those little carved-out rooms in the cliff face was wild. You can still see the soot marks from their fires on the ceiling. Standing in those same spots just gives you a real feeling for how they lived.

8