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Debate: Do we over-excavate historical sites today compared to the 1950s?
I was reading about the old digs at Çatalhöyük where they basically just ripped through layers with pickaxes and shovels to get to the Neolithic stuff fast. Now I see modern teams spending weeks digging a single 1 meter square test pit with dental tools and screens smaller than my kitchen strainer. The old way got results quickly but probably destroyed a ton of context about later occupation phases that could tell us about climate change or trade patterns. The new way is way more careful but takes forever and costs a fortune, so we hardly ever get to open big areas anymore. My buddy in the field says we're too slow now and missing the big picture relationships between structures. What do you all think, are we too careful today or were the old timers too sloppy?
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tyler_hall91mo ago
Don't you think the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle? Like, the old timers had the right idea about scale but the modern folks nailed the methods, so maybe we're just missing the budget to do both.
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milap351mo ago
Whats the biggest thing holding that middle ground back in your opinion? Is it really just budget or is there something else stopping people from putting it together?
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