The day I stopped calling everything 'pottery' on site visits

For years I worked on digs and just labeled any broken clay piece as 'pottery shard' in my notes. Last summer on a site near Tulsa, a volunteer found a curved rim piece with faint black lines. My crew chief spent 20 minutes explaining it was a painted rim from a Mississippian period bowl, not just generic sherds. That moment hit me - I'd been ignoring details that tell the real story. Now I check every piece for decoration, firing marks, or rim shape before cataloging. You ever realize you were glossing over something major without knowing it?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_holly18d ago

Read somewhere that painted Mississippian pottery could indicate trade routes.

wesley38517d ago

But wouldn't the paint composition itself be more telling than the designs? Like, if you trace where the specific mineral pigments came from, that gives you a much harder clue about trade than just looking at squiggles. Did whoever wrote that mention anything about sourcing the actual paint materials, or was it just about the patterns?

reese12417d ago

Yeah but is every little squiggle on a pot really some big trade route clue or just some bored person doodling while waiting for dinner. Feels like archaeologists overthink a lot of this stuff.