Well, most people responding to this prompt will probably write something with a musical bent. Me? I don’t play any instrument (although my Mom tried to get me to in my early years). I will have to write about a non-musical instrument that I utilize in a major hobby I have: a avocational archaeology.

The instrument is my handheld Garmin GPS unit. It was a gift from my wife almost fifteen years ago. Or at least my first one was. It wore out and I found an identical replacement for it on the Internet.

The GPS unit allows me to locate archaeological features in the field, so long as I have UTMs for them. At home, before I leave for the field, I create a map on the GPS with my starting point (where I am to park), a route that I want to follow, and UTM points for any archaeological features in the area.

When I get to the field (almost always a location on Agua Fria National Monument or Perry Mesa) north of Phoenix, I turn on the GPS, mark my parking spot so I can get back to it afterwards, start creating a track of where I walk, and turn on the route so I can begin following it.

So far, I have created almost 400 tracks from my trips, marked points for over 900 prehistoric habitation sites, and created over 1,600 KMs of hiking tracks. That dosn’t include points for multiple thousands of other archaeological artifacts or features. All of those get transferred from my handheld unit to my home personal computer each time I return from the field.

With all that information I can create maps of artifacts and features in any area of the monument or mesa. It allows me to study spatial relationships in a visual manner which is not possible through any other means.

One of the problems I’ve encountered is that after fifteen years, the huge amount of data I’ve collected is in danger of becoming obsolete. The original software I’ve used for years is no long supported by Garmin. Neither is the actual handheld GPS unit. That’s why I had to replace my first unit with another duplicate that I found on the Internet. Somehow, someday, I’ll need to get all that data translated into a version that can be supported with newer software.

Anyway, that’s the “instrument” that I decided to blog about today. I hope it was informative and interesting for you.