Took me 8 hours to date a single pottery sherd from a dig in Ohio

I pulled this small piece of pottery from a site near the Muskingum River last fall. Thought it would be a quick look under the microscope and done. Ended up spending 8 hours cross-referencing paste recipes and temper types with old field notes. Turns out the clay source matched a spot 30 miles away, which threw the whole timeline off. Has anyone else spent way too long trying to pin down a single artifact?

2 comments

2 Comments

betty1448d ago

Thirty miles away? Are you kidding me?

rowan_hayes7d ago

Nah, thirty miles is NOTHING for clay. I've had pieces from a site in West Virginia that ended up matching a clay bed clear across the state line. You gotta remember these old potting communities didn't stay in one spot, they moved around and traded. One thing that saved me a ton of time was keeping a running spreadsheet of paste recipes by site. Every time I ID a new temper type or inclusion, I log it with a photo. Sounds boring but it cuts your next sherd's dating time down to maybe an hour, two tops. Also check if your site has any historic accounts of potters traveling for seasonal clay digging, that was super common around the Ohio River valley.