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Rant: I spent 3 hours trying to piece together a single Roman pot from a dig site box
It was just labeled 'misc. sherds' from a site in Pompeii, and I thought it was one vessel. Anyone have a good method for sorting mixed ceramic fragments?
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paulw871mo ago
Honestly that sounds like a fun puzzle. Sorting through a box of mixed Pompeii sherds is basically the whole job. If it was clearly one pot they would have bagged it that way. The misc box is for the real detective work, matching fabric types and rim profiles. I once spent a week on a box from Ostia and found parts of three different thin walled beakers. That's the win, not just putting one thing together.
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james_singh71mo ago
Right? That's the whole point of the misc box. It's not about the easy wins, it's about spotting those tiny connections everyone else missed. Finding one piece of a puzzle is cool, but building three separate ones from a pile of junk feels like real magic.
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the_lee1mo ago
Remember that time I spent two hours trying to match a handle, only to realize it was from a flower pot my kid broke?
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