That 1937 excavation photo changed how I see old field notes

I was reading a digitized report from the University of Pennsylvania's work at Tell el-Hesi last night, and one detail floored me. The team recorded every pottery sherd by weight, not count, because they said counting was 'a waste of a trained eye.' That was 85 years ago, and it made me realize how much method has shifted since then. Has anyone else stumbled on an old field note that made you question how you organize your own finds?

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carr.gavin10d ago

Actually, the weight versus count thing goes back even further than that. Flinders Petrie was weighing sherds at Tell el-Hesi in the 1890s, not just in the 1937 season. The Penn team was following a system that was already old by then, so it wasn't as new a idea as the report makes it seem. Still, your point stands about method changing. What gets me is how they used to toss out most of the pottery after weighing it. They kept only the complete pieces and the painted ones. So a lot of what they recorded by weight is gone now, and you can't ever check their numbers again. That bothers me more than the counting debate. These days we photograph everything and keep every bag, but we also sit on thousands of boxes that nobody has time to look at. Old notes seem efficient until you realize they threw away the evidence.