My surface survey project has me doubting the drone mapping craze

Everyone on my team swears by drone maps for locating new sites, but I keep spotting pottery fragments they miss during my slow walks. This makes me think we're too quick to replace basic field skills with fancy gear. Have you ever found simple methods more reliable than high-tech tools?

3 comments

3 Comments

hayden1529d ago

My friend used drones to map a large field for a dig last year. He kept walking the grid himself and found a stone tool pile the images had completely missed. It taught him that tech can miss what a careful eye on the ground will catch.

quinnc449d ago

Lol my phone's autocorrect once tried to tell me a potsherd was a "pot shed," so I feel you. Fancy gear has its place, but sometimes it just adds new ways to miss the obvious. I'll trust my own two feet and a slow pace over a buzzing camera any day.

alexj992d ago

Remember what @quinnc44 said about missing the obvious? Makes me wonder if the drone images missed that tool pile because they were looking for the wrong thing, like big shapes instead of small piles. Maybe the tech needs a person to tell it what's actually important to look for.