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Just realized I've been dating pottery shards wrong for years
I always assumed the darker the pottery, the older it had to be since I saw that at a dig in New Mexico. Then a guy at the lab showed me how firing temperature and clay composition can totally change the color on pieces from the same time period. Has anyone else fallen for that trap or am I the only one who spent months mislabeling stuff?
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oliver52318d ago
Oh man, the charcoal thing is key. I did the same mistake looking at these grey vs buff colored sherds near a riverbed. Thought they were from different tribes but it was literally just the temperature of the fire pit. My buddy in the lab still teases me about it. It's wild how something as basic as what you cooked with changes everything.
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oliver52318d ago
Had a friend in grad school who spent a whole semester cataloging shell middens by color. Turned out the red ones he thought were ceremonial were just from a specific cookfire on the east side of the site where they burned oak instead of pine. He only figured it out because his advisor noticed the charcoal layers underneath were different. Now I always ask what kind of wood they burned before I even look at the pottery color. Simple things like that make you feel like a professional instead of someone guessing in the dark.
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