1000 Uses for Your Trowel - Archaeology

By K. Kris Hirst, About.com Guide

My name is Chris Carleton, and I work in northern British Columbia, Canada, as an archaeological consultant and I love every minute of it. Just before winter fell upon us I was travelling one of the highways up here with a colleague and we encountered a serious problem solved by, you guessed it, a trowel. The window washer fluid dispenser on the driver's side of our truck wasn't working properly and even after much fidgeting was just drizzling the all-important cleaner onto the bottom of the windshield. I say all-important because there was a tremendous amount of mud being flung at us by oncoming traffic so that my colleague couldn't see the road. It's awfully important to be able to see when driving particularly on this stretch of highway which is constantly being used by heavy industrial traffic. As you can see, we duct-taped the trowel to the hood of our vehicle and voila! The perfect solution for our problem.

It just goes to show that a trowel is a versatile tool and any archaeologist's best friend.