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Just found my first intact artifact after months of sifting through dirt
I was working a small dig site near Tucson, just doing the usual careful scraping with my trowel. Honestly, I was mostly finding tiny pottery shards and animal bones for weeks. But yesterday, my trowel hit something smooth and whole, and I pulled out a perfect stone mano grinding tool (the kind used with a metate). I learned that sometimes the best stuff is right where you've been looking all along, you just have to be patient. Has anyone else had a find just appear like that after a long dry spell?
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evan_davis5d ago
Oh man, I gotta jump in here really quick. It's not just pure luck like beth147 said, even though it can feel that way from the outside. Honestly, the real trick is knowing where to look in the first place, which takes a lot of studying old maps, talking to locals, and understanding how people lived back then. You put in all that groundwork and then you just have to go through the motions of digging for ages before something finally pops up. It's more like the luck comes from all the prep work you did beforehand, not just the moment you find the thing. And it sounds like you did that right, which is why you finally got that perfect mano.
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beth1472mo ago
Wasn't that just pure luck, though?
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jason_stone592mo ago
Honestly @beth147 I used to think the same way about stuff like that. I mean I always figured it was just random chance, you know? But then I saw this breakdown of how it actually works and it totally changed my mind. It's way more about putting yourself in the right spot over and over, not just a one-time lucky break. Maybe it's just me but seeing the process behind it made it feel way less like luck.
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