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?

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benbrown3mo 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.

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derekgibson3mo 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.

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