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An old trowel hand in Pompeii told me I was digging too fast and it stuck with me for 15 years
Back in 2009 I was on a dig near Pompeii as a student and I got paired up with this older Italian guy named Salvatore who had been digging in that same dirt for almost 30 years. I was moving fast because I wanted to hit the floor level before lunch, scraping away with my trowel like I was racing somebody. He grabbed my wrist, not rough, just firm, and said in broken English, slow slow, the pot has been waiting 2000 years, it can wait ten more minutes. Then he showed me a tiny bronze fibula I had literally skimmed right over, like maybe 2 centimeters of it poking out of the ash. I had walked past it twice that morning and never saw it. These days I dig with a dental pick half the time and I think about him whenever I catch myself rushing. Anybody else have an old-timer on a site completely change how you work the dirt?
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