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Finally stopped brushing in the field and started using a trowel guide after my 7th broken rim in Sicily
I used to just eyeball every trench wall and constantly nick artifacts, but now I measure twice with a string line before scraping, which cut my damage incidents way down, has anyone else switched to guides after ruining a few finds?
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emery2901mo ago
Seven broken rims" sounds less like bad luck and more like you're just wrecking gear at that point. I mean, how many field crews actually bother with a string line for a trench survey, let alone call it a game changer?
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nguyen.morgan1mo ago
Ha, funny you mention that. My buddy runs a survey crew and he swore the same thing, that string lines were for overthinking it. Took him one bad season near Matera where he chipped a good chunk off a Late Roman amphora handle and then put a crack straight through a stamped tile the next week. After that he started using a laser level on the guide posts, not even a trowel guide, just a cheap one from a hardware store. He still talks about that tile like it was a family pet. Now he won't scrape a single layer without the line being dead straight, calls it his insurance policy.
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