Chat with a field tech changed how I see pottery shards

Was at a local archaeology meetup last saturday and this guy who digs in Arizona told me he treats every broken piece of pottery like a page in a book. He said most folks just catalog them and move on, but he spends like 10 minutes on each one looking at the curve and the firing marks. It hit me different cause I always rushed through sorting shards at our site near the river. Now I'm gonna slow way down and see what I've been missing. Anyone else pick up a weird habit from a random conversation?

2 comments

2 Comments

milaprice13h ago

Woah, ten minutes on one shard? That's wild. Honestly, I can barely sit still for two minutes before I want to move to the next piece. But now that you mention it, I bet there's a ton of detail in the way the clay was pinched or how the rim was finished that I just blow right past. Ngl, I feel a little dumb for treating them like they were just broken cups and bowls instead of actual clues. Gonna try that curve trick next time I'm at our site and see if I can catch any weird firing patterns I missed before.

benc5313h ago

Rub a finger along the rim to feel for micro-chips or smoothing that the eye misses.