The day I hit 100 intact pot sherds in one dig

I was working a site near Santa Fe back in 2018, just a volunteer on a summer crew. We were screening dirt from a test pit, and I pulled out my 100th piece of pottery that still had the original painted design on it. Most sherds are so worn down you can barely see the pattern, but these were crisp like they were made yesterday. Made me think about how fast things get buried and forgotten once people move on. Anybody else hit a number that caught them off guard like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

shane_ross1mo ago

Were those 100 sherds all from the same period or did you see a mix of styles across different eras? I've always found it interesting how a single test pit can sometimes give you pottery from three different centuries all mixed together by rodent burrows and root action. It makes you wonder how careful we really are about sorting the layers. Did your crew keep them separated by depth or just bag them all together as one lot? Because if they're that crisp, I'd be curious to know if they all came from the same feature or if it was just a really rich trash midden that stayed undisturbed for a long time.

theawest1mo ago

Eh, I actually push back on that a bit. Clear breaks between layers aren't that uncommon if you're digging in a sealed pit or a buried floor, rodent mixing gets overblown when the site's been plowed or disturbed before.