Appreciation post: choosing the trowel over the shovel at a Roman fort in England paid off
Two summers ago I was digging at a Roman fort site near Hadrian's Wall and I had a choice: keep going with the shovel like everyone else or switch to a small trowel. I picked the trowel because the dirt was getting darker and softer, and about 20 minutes later I hit a pocket of charred grain that turned out to be a burned storage pit from around 120 AD. The shovel guys had already scraped right past three spots like it without noticing. My trench supervisor wrote it up in the site log and the pit ended up on the final plan. Has anyone else made a call like that on a dig and been glad they slowed down?