My neighbor's kid asked if we ever find dinosaur bones at our dig site

I was telling him about the Roman pottery shards we're cataloging from a site near York, and he looked so disappointed. He said, 'But pottery is just old plates, that's boring.' It made me realize how much we take the small finds for granted. What's a simple artifact that you think gets overlooked but tells a great story?

3 comments

3 Comments

sammartinez9d ago

Pottery shards are way more than old plates, man. They show trade routes from the fingerprints in the clay, or what people ate from the soot marks. A kid's thumbprint on a piece made two thousand years ago beats a dinosaur bone for me, because it's a direct link to a real person. That stuff makes the past feel alive in a way big bones sometimes don't.

rowan_reed689d ago

Honestly, my own thumbprint on a coffee mug is probably my most lasting artifact.

brian_taylor159d ago

Check the wear on a simple stone bead. Shows how often someone touched it, maybe for comfort or prayer.