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  • how deep to dig

    I’m preparing to dig an area of my backyard for a new garden bed, and since I’ve found artifacts in the same area (a Levanna and 2 scrapers), I’m hoping to score again. what I’ve found so far was relatively close to the surface after I pulled the grass out, within 8-10” underneath. I’m wondering how deep I should try and go and looking for any other tips for digging. I’m in CT by the way, shoreline town. I’m really itching to find something since hunting the beaches and river haven’t produced anything in a while.

  • #2
    Dig till you stop finding flakes, find the layer their laying at and follow it. This is just a rough generalization though, older artifacts will be deeper if their there, but 8-10 inches or so seems right, though in certain spots I dig deeper than a foot.
    call me Jay, i live in R.I.

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    • firefly887
      firefly887 commented
      Editing a comment
      I should probably sift, I haven’t found more than a few flakes but I’m not working very systematically and they’re easy to miss in big piles of dirt. I’d like to dig at least a couple feet but don’t know if it’d be worth it to do more than that.

  • #3
    How close are you to the beach and what is the soil like? If it has a dark loam above a reddish brown soil perhaps 2 feet will be enough. A archaeologist once told me a good rule of thumb in CT is 1 inch of soil depth equals 400 years time span. There are variables that can change this. On sites I had dug I was usually hitting hard pan @ about 24 to 26 inches depth.
    TN formerly CT Visit our store http://stores.arrowheads.com/store.p...m-Trading-Post

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    • firefly887
      firefly887 commented
      Editing a comment
      I’m only about a mile from the Housatonic. once I get the grass out the soil is pretty sandy and can be gravelly in spots but very easy to dig. that’s interesting to know about the soil. there really doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to what I find— the Levanna was found pretty close to the surface, and the scrapers a little deeper but in other areas I’ve dug a foot or more to find bottles, marbles, china...guess someone was digging pits for trash here decades ago.

  • #4
    It is best to screen it with at least 3/8" mesh hardware cloth. Good luck in the hunt.
    TN formerly CT Visit our store http://stores.arrowheads.com/store.p...m-Trading-Post

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    • #5
      I have been digging for 12 years on an Early Woodland site.Adena and I do not find anything deeper than 24 inches.Pottery fragments are around the 3,000 bc time line.Pottery with no cord marks.

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      • #6
        Different animal up there I'm sure, but make sure you have gone all the way. My general rule of thumb is dig until you stop finding flakes, then dig another 12 inches (unless you're getting into hardpan of course). There are sometimes significant gaps in occupation. In my eastern MO site, I almost quit when I hit a near sterile layer that was about 10 inches thick at one point of my shelter dig. I went down just a bit more out of curiosity and started hitting lots more flakes with charred bone again. Oh, and then a DALTON! That was ~6 ft under the surface.

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        • #7
          All great advice from different parts of the country (due to soil and depth conditions). In most of FL, there are no rocks, only soil then sand down to hardpan. We almost always dig to the hardpan. If you drop a penny on the ground it will be under the soil shortly and within a few years will be inches down. This is from soil buildup over the items PLUS the items do continue down if they can without hitting rocks from basic gravity to tree roots, burrows etc etc. Dig to what you have as a hardpan. If material is only in one layer above that then you can concentrate on that layer and not dig so deep...but you will miss some by not digging at least a few inches below the productive layer(s).
          You do not want to miss out on a multi-component site with Woodland all the way down to Paleo...!@
          Professor Shellman
          Tampa Bay

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