Remember when dig sites used paper maps and pencils? I miss that.

Last week I was out at a site near Santa Fe and one of the younger volunteers pulled out a tablet for mapping. Three years ago we were using graph paper and sharpened pencils at this same spot. It works faster I guess but there was something about sitting in the dirt sketching layers by hand. Has anyone else noticed how much field methods have shifted in the last few years?

2 comments

2 Comments

benbrown26d ago

Just wait until they invent a tablet that auto-fills the stratigraphy for you. At that point we might as well just stay home and play Minecraft.

derekgibson26d ago

My wife retired from teaching last spring and she talks about the same thing with grading. Used to be she'd sit at the kitchen table with a red pen and actually write notes on papers. Now it's all digital forms and dropdown menus. Something gets lost when you take the physical element out of it. I think we're trading away some of the thoughtfulness for speed, and not just in archaeology either.