A grad student basically told me my site sketches were useless

I was working on a dig in New Mexico last summer, mapping a pueblo room block. I'd been making these neat, clean sketches of the walls we uncovered. A grad student from the university team looked at my notebook and said, 'But where are the rocks?' I mean, I had the outline, but she pointed out I wasn't drawing the individual stones or their shapes, which tells you about building phases. I changed my method that same day, spending an extra 20 minutes per unit to draw each major stone. The next week, it actually helped us spot a later repair in the wall that the clean sketch would have missed. Has anyone else had a simple piece of feedback completely shift how they record in the field?

3 comments

3 Comments

faithgonzalez2d ago

That grad student feedback is so real. My first field school I was just drawing straight lines for walls until someone showed me how to show tumble and collapse. Totally changed what we could see later.

brown.willow2d ago

What pueblo site were you at?

nora_bennett722d ago

Was it Mesa Verde you went to, brown.willow? I was just at Bandelier last month and it blew my mind. Climbing up into those little carved-out rooms in the cliff face was wild. You can still see the soot marks from their fires on the ceiling. Standing in those same spots just gives you a real feeling for how they lived.