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Shoutout to the volunteer at Cahokia who let me hold a 900 year old arrowhead
I tagged along on a weekend dig at Cahokia Mounds near Collinsville, Illinois about a decade back, mostly to carry buckets and stay out of the way. A volunteer named Ray pulled a chunk of chert from the screen and instead of bagging it right away, he set it in my palm and told me to feel how the notches were worked. That one minute changed how I walk through any site now, because I started looking at flakes and chips on the ground instead of just the big stuff behind glass. Since then I keep a small notebook of every sherd or flake I spot, and I have logged 40 plus of them on family land in southern Missouri. It taught me that most of the story sits in the trash people left behind, not the fancy pieces. Has anyone else had a dig volunteer or guide hand them something and totally change how they look at a site?
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wade_wells5810h ago
I read once that archeologists learn more from trash piles than from treasure.
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