Let's say you are excavating a site. You are being pretty careful, and are using 1/4" mesh screens to sieve the dirt after it is removed by a trowel and dustpan from the site. You find a few very small but well-preserved fish bones. The next day:
A) you decide to stop using trowels and start using dental tools for the excavation; you are probably not recovering many fish bones because they are being inadvertently destroyed by troweling.
B) you conclude that people in the past were not using minnows and you cease excavation.
C) you fear that the 1/4" mesh of the screen may allow most of the very small fish bones to pass through; you decide to switch to 1/8" mesh, and maybe even screen a sample of dirt through 1/16" mesh to see if you are finding few bones because they are not present, or because the screening method is systematically losing them.
D) you realize that fish were not being used prehistorically and decide that a single backhoe trench through the site will probably give you a sufficient amount of remains of other animals to permit you to test your hypothesis.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The correct choice is C because switching to a finer mesh size, such as 1/8" or 1/16", would help in recovering smaller fish bones that might be passing through the larger 1/4" mesh, thus improving the accuracy of the excavation findings.

Let's Say You Are Excavating a Site