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Picked between digging the midden layer first or the house floor, and the trash pile taught me way more
Last summer I had 6 weeks on a site outside Tucson and had to choose one spot to open up first, a burned house floor or the trash midden 15 meters behind it. I went with the floor since it looked better on paper, spent 4 weeks there, and got almost nothing except a few sherds and part of a metate. My field school buddy picked the midden on his grid and pulled out 200+ pieces in the same time, including two whole olivella shell beads and a copper bell. Trash pits are where people toss the stuff they broke or wore out, so you get a way fuller picture of daily life fast. I switched to the midden for my last 2 weeks and finally found enough to write a real report. Anyone else learned the hard way that the boring pile is often the money pile?
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wendy727d ago
Learned that same lesson on a site in New Mexico where I wasted three weeks troweling a room block that gave me maybe a dozen flakes. My buddy working the midden behind the plaza pulled a whole bone awl and a string of turquoise beads in his first week. Featureless floors look great in a research design but the trash is where the actual people left their story.
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