Neat interview I found with a battlefield archaeologists

[MalteseFalcon]

My 3 times great grandfather was killed fighting for the Confederacy at the Battle Of Pea Ridge in Northwestern Arkansas in March of 1862.

I was looking at aerial views of the modern day battlefield using Microsoft's Virtual Earth just now, and seeing all the open fields surrounding the Park Service property, I wondered what would happen if I googled "Metal detecting around Pea Ridge battlefield".

Here is the result. Not totally what I was looking for, but I figured you all might find it interesting. This guy is into the European way of thinking when it relates to metal detecting as an additional tool for archaeologists to use:

http://www.archaeology.org/online/interviews/scott.html

And then I found this concerning Pea Ridge:

http://www.nps.gov/history/mwac/wicr_peri/field_methods.htm

 

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[Tom_in_CA]

While it is "good for image" to work side-by-side with archaeologists, it is very slow and boring. Not the kind of fun we're all used to. I did it once at a place where an 1800s Chinese Fishing once stood. In modern times, a bunch of modern industrial buildings are on the site (boat repair facility, etc...). When I turned on my detector, signals were everywhere (slag from all the industrial history, past and present). The archaeologist would not permit us to dig any of them up, even though they were (based on the TID and depth) likely modern zinc, tabs, foil, slag, etc... Instead, we had to flag each one for him to dig up later. When it became PAINFULLY obvious that a person could flag 100 signals an hour, we resorted to just random flags here and there. A total waste of time

A friend of mine also volunteered for an archaeologist in a New Mexico site that dated to Spanish times. Same thing for him: Flag signals all over. They didn't even dig them that day! He never got to see what was found.

I suppose it would depend on the site, and what the archaeologists let you do.