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Compared two digging methods at a Roman site in northern France and one was way better
We were working a small Roman villa site near Amiens last spring. I had been using the standard trowel and brush approach for a week, but the guy next to me was using a fine mist sprayer and a small pick. I thought he was wasting time. Then I tried it on a stubborn floor layer. The mist softened the dirt just enough to see the mortar lines clearly without damaging the tile. I pulled out three intact floor sections in one afternoon. With my old dry method I was lucky to get one a day. The sprayer saved me from chipping edges and missing subtle color changes in the mosaic. Has anyone else found that adding water or mist to a dig changes how much detail you catch?
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jenny_lee11d ago
Yeah the dry trowel thing is what I always thought too. But then I did a dig near a bog in Belgium where the soil was super compacted clay. The guy running the site showed me how a fine mist was the only way to keep the bone fragments from crumbling. If you try to cut into dry clay it shatters everything. The mist makes it soft enough to scrape without pushing hard.
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the_sean11d ago
I get what you're saying about soaking being gentler, but I don't think it's really the same principle here. Dish soap loosens food while misting a dig is more about preventing damage to fragile materials that can't handle a heavy soak. A dry trowel still gives you more control over exactly where you cut into the soil.
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