Unpopular opinion: wet sifting beats dry sifting at my site in Utah, but my old professor would have kicked me

Rowan Jenkins · 2026-10-09T19:25:05.070894+00:00

I spent my first two field schools dry screening everything with a 1/4 inch mesh, because that is what the 1998 manual in the trailer said to do. Last summer at a site outside Kanab we switched to wet sifting with window screen and a garden hose, and our flake count went from 12 to 80 per bucket in the same unit. My old professor says water destroys plant remains and charcoal context, which is fair, but we pulled a seed that dry screening missed for three weeks. So who is right here, do you wet sift or do you stick with dry and just run more dirt?

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Unpopular opinion: wet sifting beats dry sifting at my site in Utah, but my old professor would have kicked me | Archaeology Discoveries - Librear