Technique Comparison

I was reflecting on the methods we use out in the field and was thinking about how other museums or individuals may find our techniques more "unorthodox" or "lacking."  The reason behind why people would think this is because we do not spend the extra money that we do not have on more archival-safe materials.  I have excavated at only one other site, and this was through the Museum of Texas Tech.  In Snyder, TX I was working at a paleontological excavation on a Pleistocene stream bed.  There, we would excavate at 2.5 cm sublevels (with 10 cm levels - it's like the technique here in Hahn, but broken down in smaller levels) in our own small 1m x 1m units.  Instead of pulling things out of the ground and relying on glue to piece together already broken artifacts, we were to use wooden bamboo skewers to pick out each specimen we find slowly and carefully.  We also have to map and make a tab for each and every individual specimen we find per sublevel, making the paperwork we do take up half to day and excavating take up the rest of the time.  In Ohio, when we find an object that is fragile or brittle, we wrap the artifact in aluminum foil or place it in a box and label it. In Texas, however, we need to excavate around the specimen so that after a few sublevels, it rests in a little "pedastal."  Depending on the size or condition of the specimen, we either take out the whole block that contains the object, or we place a plaster cast around it and excavate it in the lab at the museum.  In the meantime, we need to make separate paperwork that includes a blown-up map of where the object was found and additional information such as dimensions and coordinates.  I will admit, there is a LOT of patience needed to invest in excavation, but the pace at which we excavate in Texas is almost painfully slow in comparison to how many units and features we go through in Ohio.  In paleontology, we do not have "features" but instead just map the natural changes in soil; for example, the sediment we excavated in was called "gleyed deposit," almost like a green clay.  When we encountered pockets of sand, we were to take a ruler and measure the extent of which we find the sand in the sediment and map it in on our paperwork.  Most of the information on our paperwork was similar to what we write down in Ohio - changes in soil we encountered, objects found, techniques used, difficulties experienced when excavating, etc.  I find that paperwork, though tedious, is an extremely important component in excavation because it allows us to keep tabs on what happened on which day, where a certain object was found to allow for information on context, and what to look for when excavating the next level.  All in all, though at the end of the day I sometimes want to pull my hair out when confronting individuals issues I find with each method, I still consider the value of the methodology needed behind each preservation approach and technique, because otherwise we would not have the information about certain sites that we have today.