Just realized how much context matters in dating pottery shards

Had a chat with a guy from a dig in New Mexico last week. He told me about a site where they found similar looking shards 20 feet apart but one set was from 1200 AD and the other from 1500 AD. Said if they hadn't checked the soil layers and nearby pollen samples, they'd have lumped them together. Got me thinking how many mistakes get made when people just look at the object and ignore where it sat. How do you guys handle context when you're working with surface finds that don't have clear layers?

3 comments

3 Comments

felixm293d ago

That shard on the ground has been moved by wind or animals though.

barbara_jenkins663d ago

And I gotta say, I push back on that a little. In my experience working with surface finds, you can still get pretty good context by looking at things like nearby plant communities and modern erosion patterns. Your mileage may vary, but sometimes a shard sitting right on the ground tells you just as much as one buried six feet down if you pay attention to what's around it.

simon_carr3d ago

Honestly, is this really that big of a deal? Like, we're talking about surface finds here. It's not like we're debating rocket science or something. Plant communities and erosion patterns might give you a general idea, but that shard could have been kicked around by a deer last week. You're not getting a solid timeline from that kind of stuff. Feels like a lot of fuss over something that barely matters in the grand scheme of things.