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TIL the hard way that mud bricks and rain don't mix, lesson learned at a dig site in Arizona
Last month I was volunteering at a small excavation near Tucson. We were documenting a Hohokam pit house and someone thought it'd be fine to leave the trench tarp off overnight because 'the forecast said 10% chance.' Woke up at 5am to a downpour. The exposed adobe wall just melted into a brown soup. We spent the next three days trying to salvage the outline but the stratigraphy was basically gone. My crew chief just stared at the smear and said 'well, that's archaeology for you.' Now I check the radar myself every single night before we cover up, even if the sky is clear. Has anyone else had a site get wrecked by weather? I need to know I'm not the only one who trusted a forecast they should've double checked.
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mason7984d ago
Ugh, that's brutal! But honestly, my buddy had the exact same thing happen at a site in Utah last spring. He swears the forecast said sunny for a week straight, and then a random thunderstorm rolled in and turned their whole excavation unit into a puddle. They lost a whole hearth feature they'd been cleaning for days, just washed away into the dirt. He's way paranoid now too, checks like three different weather apps before he even thinks about calling it quits for the day. You're definitely not alone in this, trusting a forecast is like the classic rookie move we all learn the hard way.
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