Took me 6 weeks to date a flint scatter because I ignored the soil layers

Dakota Bell · 2026-10-18T17:30:04.033987+00:00

I helped out on a small dig outside of Lawrence, Kansas last fall and the whole thing stalled because of me. We had a scatter of flint flakes in a field and I kept trying to type them by shape alone, which got us nowhere for about 6 weeks. A grad student finally asked why I wasn't checking the stratigraphy first, and once we looked at the soil layers the picture got clear fast. The flakes sat in two bands from different occupations, and one band had pottery bits mixed in that dated it way later than I assumed. Cost me a whole weekend of re-bagging labels too. Has anyone else gotten stuck on typology when the dirt under your feet was telling the story the whole time?

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Took me 6 weeks to date a flint scatter because I ignored the soil layers | Archaeology Discoveries - Thought Shares