Switched from shovel to trowel for digging test pits and it changed my whole approach

I used to just grab a shovel and dig wide holes at every site I worked on in Colorado. Last spring, a volunteer showed me how to use a sharp trowel and work in small 50 cm squares instead. Now I can spot changes in soil layers way easier and I find more small artifacts like flakes or bone fragments. Has anyone else had a simple tool swap that improved their field work?

3 comments

3 Comments

elliot451mo ago

Had a buddy who swore by his old trenching shovel for years. We were working a site in New Mexico and he just kept missing these little bits of charcoal and burnt seeds in the soil. Another guy on our crew loaned him a masonry trowel for a day, just to try it out. By lunch he was literally sitting on the ground scraping away at a 30cm square like he was a kid playing in the dirt. He found three arrowhead tips and a piece of a clay pipe stem that afternoon. He still talks about that trowel like it was some kind of magic wand, even though it was just a cheap tool from the hardware store.

vera_campbell1mo ago

Wait, you're telling me I've been digging like a damn backhoe for 15 years and a volunteer just casually changed my whole life with a little trowel? Sounds about right. I upgraded from a rusty shovel to a 5-inch trowel and suddenly I'm finding micro flakes I never even knew existed. It's like the soil layers are actually having a conversation with me now instead of just sitting there. But now I feel like an idiot for all those years of just digging big holes and calling it "field work." Guess I owe that volunteer a beer.

the_sam1mo ago

@vera_campbell it's funny you mention that because I was totally in the "shovel is the only way" camp for years. A buddy talked me into trying a narrow trowel on a site in Wyoming and I spotted a tiny bone fragment I would have definitely crushed with a shovel. The soil layers actually make sense now, like you said... they talk back to you instead of just being a big brown mess.