Question about a pottery shard mix-up during a dig near Tucson

I was helping sift soil at a Hohokam site last spring and accidentally put a painted shard in the plainware bucket, which took our team lead, Dr. Chen, about three hours to sort out during cataloging back at the lab.

3 comments

3 Comments

seanc731d ago

Oh man, that's the ultimate archaeology oops. You basically gave Dr. Chen a three-hour, super boring jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces are brown. Hope you brought better coffee than the lab stuff as an apology.

pat_murray531d ago

The lab coffee is actually pretty decent, it's a local roast. The real issue was the soil type. It was a heavy clay that dried into basically one solid lump. Took us two days just to get it broken up enough to wet sieve. Dr. Chen was a good sport about it though.

grace_knight191d ago

Three hours honestly sounds like a decent turnaround for a clay lump. I've seen material sit on a lab table for weeks. It's messy, sure, but calling it the "ultimate" oops feels like a stretch for field work. That's just a standard Tuesday.