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PSA: I stopped sifting my dirt and found way more stuff
Everyone in my local club keeps telling new folks to sift every bucket through 1/4 inch mesh, and after two years of doing that at a site near Tucson I started wondering if I was missing tiny stuff. Last spring I ran a test on a 3 foot by 3 foot pit, sifting half and just troweling and hand sorting the other half. The unsifted side gave me 14 flakes and a broken point tip that would have fallen right through my screen, while the sifted side gave me 9 flakes and nothing else. I think the vibration and dumping actually scatters small pieces deeper into the pile where you stop looking. Now I only sift when the dirt is rocky or when I am screening for charcoal samples. Anyone else tried skipping the screen on a small test pit and gotten better results?
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