Prior to the onset of the TMSP, the wet-sifting technique, in which significant portions of the site's soil (as opposed to selected loci) are water-screened, was used by local archaeologists only in some Prehistoric sites. This led to a problem in comparing finds from the Temple Mount to other sites. For example, while comparison to other Iron Age Judahite sites showed a similar distribution of different types of figurines (human, animal, etc.), the percentage of fragments was incomparable - more leg fragments were recovered by the TMSP than all other sites combined, and horn\ear fragments were reported solely by the TMSP. This is not to say that such fragment did not exist in other sites, but rather, that their small size caused them to remain unnoticed by archaeologists excavating in traditional methods.