Do archeologists and geologists sometimes lick or taste the things they dig up? What information can they get from this?

Answer 1

Archaeologists sometimes used to lick artifacts they excavated in the field to determine if they were bone or not. Everything on an excavation, including the archaeologists themselves, is often covered in dirt, so it can be difficult to tell what material an object is made of when it first comes out of the ground. Fragments of bone can resemble a lot of other things, like wood, certain rocks, or pottery. Also, many archaeologists wear gloves in the field and often don't want to take off their gloves to examine artifacts individually before recording them. Licking artifacts was a quick way to determine if an ambiguous object was bone or not, because bone feels "sticky" on the tongue whereas rocks, wood, and pottery all feel about how you would expect. Sometimes archaeologists would also spit on artifacts, usually when they were trying to get a little moisture to wipe off dirt and dust to see an object better. That said, most modern archaeologists do not do either of these things because spit can contaminate artifacts, ruining archaeological information that could be picked up by things like residue analysis. Plus, it's not worth the risk of licking something you ethically shouldn't, and licking things that were on or in the ground is just unhygienic. There are far better and safer ways to determine an object's material composition.