That documentary guy who called every pottery sherd 'Roman' really gets on my nerves

I was watching this Netflix doc about early Britain last night and the narrator kept pointing at dark age pottery from the 7th century and calling it Roman. Like sir, that's Anglo-Saxon stamped ware with no slip at all. I volunteer at a dig in York on weekends and our supervisor would lose it if we mixed those up. Has anyone else noticed these big shows just glossing over basic distinctions?

2 comments

2 Comments

uma_wilson791mo ago

Cracked up reading this because honestly, I once spent a whole dig season cleaning what I thought was Roman Samian ware only to have our supervisor gently tell me it was just a fancy piece of Victorian garden pot with a similar red glaze. Ngl, I still cringe thinking about that moment. So yeah, I get why that narrator bugs you, some of these docs treat context like it's optional.

the_derek1mo ago

Oh man, that Samian ware story hits SO close to home. I once spent three weeks getting REALLY excited over what I thought was a Medieval bone comb fragment. Turned out to be a modern hair pick that some kid dropped in a test pit back in the 80s during a school visit. The worst part is I even showed it to the site director all proud like I found a golden ticket. He just nodded real slow and said "that's... definitely something." I still wake up in cold sweat thinking about that walk of shame back to the finds table. We ALL have those moments where context goes out the window and our brains just want it to be something COOL.