ancient stones in soggy sand

Nearly twenty years ago, I spent several summers digging Mesolithic sites in Scotland. We gridded the sites up into 50cm squares, shovelled out the deposits and sieved the lot, by hand and hose, sifting out tiny bits of flint from the mass of residue. Some of the lithics were recognisable tools (microliths, scrappers, limpet hammers, cores, etc.) and the vast majority consisted of crappy debitage, the detritus of pre-historic subsistence strategies and manufacturing. (See the 2 vols edited by Steve Mithen for a full report - http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Hunter-gatherer+landscape+archaeology%3A+the+Southern+Hebrides...-a084341540).
So it's with a sense of deja vu that I've spent the past couple of weeks digging 50cm squares in the sands of Cranbourne, looking for Indigenous artefacts - half a world away, different raw materials, but similar techniques in the way the stone tools were knapped thousands of years ago and the way we have been digging them up.
The sites here in Oz are more diffuse scatters of uncertain date than the intensive occupation sites we worked on in the Hebrides. The artefacts number in the hundreds rather than the hundreds of thousands, and can move up and down in sand quite significantly over time, thanks to the activity of burrowing insects and animals, as is evident from the shot-gun cartridges we found over 25cm down. We've found no evidence of hearths or other in situ features which we could date, but the silcrete bladelets and cores are beautiful nonetheless, impressive testimony to the resourcefulness and adaptability of Australia's indigenous inhabitants.
At times the weather's been comparable too (although it's mid-winter here, rather than mid-summer when we dug in the Hebrides), but it makes little difference when you're wet-sieving, so long as you have the proper gear. Perhaps it's no coincidence then that the team here includes 2 from Ireland, 1 from Scotland and a Canadian! You'd think we'd've had enough of getting cold and wet... at least the pay is considerably better.