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The retired surveyor at a Tucson dig site who showed me how to read a trash pit
Back in 2019 I volunteered on a dig outside Tucson and a retired surveyor named Hank took me under his wing for the day. He pointed at a scatter of rusted cans and broken glass that I had walked past twice and said, "that's not junk, that's a Tuesday in 1912." He showed me how to read the seams on a can to date it within a few years, and how a medicine bottle in the same layer could pin down who lived there. Before that I thought a discovery meant a big shiny object, but Hank made a trash pit feel like a conversation with people who are long gone. We spent about 4 hours on that one square meter and I still think about it. Has anyone else had an old hand teach them a trick that changed how they look at a site?
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