Why did my dig site turn into a flooded mess this week?

I was out on a volunteer excavation near the Red River in Oklahoma on Tuesday and a sudden thunderstorm turned the whole pit into a muddy pond, ruining three days of careful sifting. We lost all the labels on our finds because the waterproof markers just washed right off the bags. Has anyone else had a whole week of work get wrecked by weather like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

verap5212d ago

Oh man, that's brutal. I once spent a whole weekend digging up what I thought was a cool old bottle, only for a sudden downpour to turn the hole into a soup can and the "bottle" was actually just a muddy rock I'd conned myself into believing was treasure. At least you had real finds to lose, I just wasted a weekend fooling myself.

sarahpatel12d ago

Oh man @verap52, I feel you on that muddy rock thing. I had a similar situation where I thought I found this old horseshoe near a creek bed and spent a whole day digging it out, only to realize it was just a weirdly shaped piece of rebar someone had tossed. What helped me was setting a rule to only dig if I can clearly see the shape or color of something that's DEFINITELY old. Also, I started bringing a little trowel instead of a shovel for test holes, so I can check without wrecking my back for nothing. Now I waste way less time on fakeouts.