Loading…
10
Warning: I watched a dig team in Pompeii toss a whole bucket of potsherds and it changed how I label every bag
Back in 2019 I was volunteering on a dig outside Pompeii and the trench supervisor told us plain body sherds were basically fill and not worth the paperwork. I watched a guy dump a bucket of them into the spoil pile, and one sherd had a tiny stamp on it that nobody caught until it was too late. That night I started writing coordinates and depth on every single bag, even the junk, and my whole field notebook system changed because of it. Now I spend about 20 extra minutes a day on labels but I sleep fine. Has anyone else had a supervisor tell you to skip recording something and then regretted it later?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
rose_murray18d ago
Did the stamped sherd end up being something datable or was it just a potter's mark that didn't tell you much? Because that detail matters a lot for whether the supervisor was actually wrong or just unlucky. I've seen plenty of plain body sherds get tossed and nothing ever came of it, but I've also heard stories where a tiny stamp or slip line turned out to be the only dating evidence for a whole layer. What did the trench supervisor say after the fact, did they change the policy or just shrug it off?
6