Judgmental Sampling Strategy

Judgmental site sampling has the highest degree of bias. Using the judgmental sampling method, the location of excavation units is often directed towards maximizing the recovery of artifacts at a known site based on prior knowledge and/or intuition.

In the diagram shown above, excavation units are clustered around surface finds in the hope that these artifacts represent buried (intact) artifact assemblages. This method is often used in salvage archaeology in situations where time and resources are limited and sites are at risk of destruction.