The day I almost dropped a 2,000-year-old pot in a trench in Turkey

I was on a dig site near Antalya last summer, brushing dirt off what we thought was a plain storage jar. My hand slipped on a loose rock and the whole thing tilted, a chunk of the rim breaking off into my lap. My heart just stopped. The site director, Dr. Arslan, ran over and we spent the next four hours doing a painstaking recovery, mapping every fragment's location. It turned out the 'plain jar' had faint painted lines under the grime, making it way more important. We got it all pieced back together in the lab, but man, that feeling of hearing that crack. Has anyone else had a close call that actually led to a better find?

2 comments

2 Comments

sean_murray20d ago

That "painstaking recovery" mapping the fragments is wild. Sounds like that slip basically forced you to document it in a way you might not have otherwise, which is kinda lucky.

kim.wren20d ago

That accidental documentation saved months of work later.