19
The pottery shard trick that saved me hours at that dig outside Santa Fe
I was out at an excavation near Santa Fe last spring, staring at a wall of dirt layers and getting nowhere on dating the site... We kept pulling up these tiny pottery fragments but couldn't match them to any local style. Then this old professor walked by, saw me frustrated, and said to just wet the shards with a spray bottle. The moisture brought out the slip colors and temper details instantly... I paired that with a magnifying glass from my truck and had the pieces sorted in under an hour. Has anyone else run into a simple field method that changes your whole approach?
2 comments