Shoutout to the guy at Pompeii who finally changed my mind about pottery shards

I used to think field school was just finding arrowheads and forgetting about the broken pots. Then in June 2023, a senior student showed me how a single rim sherd from the House of the Faun could date an entire room precisely. Anybody else have a moment where just one artifact suddenly made all the small stuff click?

2 comments

2 Comments

ray_patel2727d ago

Wait, did you actually find the date on the bottom of a broken mug?

roses6927d ago

Well, @ray_patel27, that part about finding the date on a broken mug just floored me. I honestly had to read it twice to make sure I wasn't seeing things. You mean to tell me someone actually spotted that tiny detail and it turned out to be important? That's the kind of thing you'd expect in a movie, not in real life. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how that even happens.