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That museum intern who made me rethink my whole field notebook habit
I was down at the Burke Museum last month, chatting with this intern while she sorted through some old excavation records. She pointed out that my notes were mostly about what I found, not where I put the shovel first. Said every dig diary she reads from the 1970s has way more detail about the grid corners and dirt layers than the artifacts. I laughed it off at first, but then I pulled out my own notebook from a 2021 site near Yakima and saw she was right. I wrote down the arrowheads and bones but barely mentioned the stratigraphy unless something broke. Now I'm kicking myself because that context is the whole story, not just the shiny stuff. Has anyone else gone back and realized their field notes are basically useless for future researchers?
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alicemurphy6d ago
A buddy of mine found his old field notes from a dig in the 90s and said the same thing, he had pages of pretty artifact sketches but wrote "soil brown" for every layer. He basically had to throw out half his site report because the context just wasn't there.
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rowanlewis6d ago
Bit of a correction though: most field schools back then did teach you to note Munsell color and basic stratigraphy, even if people skipped it in practice. If your buddy genuinely wrote "soil brown" for every layer, that's less a generational thing and more a case of him blowing off the boring part of the job. Props to him for admitting it though, most folks would just fudge the notes and hope nobody asked.
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