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Appreciation post: The time a broken garden hose saved our dig in Arizona
We were mapping a site near Tucson last summer, trying to expose a large adobe wall without damaging it. The soil was like concrete and our trowels were just scratching the surface. My crew chief was getting stressed about the schedule. I remembered a trick from a plumbing job where we used water pressure to gently clear a clog without breaking the pipe. I grabbed a cheap garden hose from the truck, poked a tiny hole in a plastic bottle to make a diffuser, and used a very light spray to soften the soil. It worked perfectly, letting us carefully brush away the mud to reveal the wall over two days. Everyone thought I was nuts until they saw the intact structure. Has anyone else used a totally non-archaeology tool to solve a field problem?
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cameronschmidt1mo ago
Try a spray bottle for really fine control on delicate stuff like that. It lets you put the water exactly where you need it without any runoff. We keep a couple in our field kit now for cleaning small finds.
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ryan_ellis1mo agoMost Upvoted
Spray bottles are a game changer for sure. I learned that the hard way after I turned a perfectly good ceramic shard into something that looked like wet cardboard. My first attempt was more of a flood than a clean. Now I just have a closet full of different sprayers, each one for a slightly different level of "mist" that I will probably never need.
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