Found a trick for dating pottery shards in the field

I kept mixing up plain rims from different eras until an old field tech told me to look at the angle of the lip instead of just the design. Tried it on 30 pieces from a site near Flagstaff and it matched the lab results 90% of the time. Anyone else use weird little clues like that to sort stuff on the fly?

2 comments

2 Comments

sandralee29d ago

90 percent sounds pretty impressive but it's only 30 pieces from one site, not exactly a huge test sample. I wouldn't bet my field notes on a lip angle trick just yet.

robinc6629d ago

Holy cow, 90 percent? That's wild. I gotta try that on the stuff from my local creek, I'm always second-guessing myself on the rims.