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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.
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seanc736mo 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.
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pat_murray536mo 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.
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grace_knight196mo 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.
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river_dixon5mo ago
Hey @grace_knight19, wasn't it a solid lump after drying, not while it was wet? That's what made it such a pain to break up.
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