Tbh, I spent a whole weekend just trying to get a single pottery shard out of the ground

Honestly, it was at a site near Tucson last month. I spotted this nice piece of Hohokam red-on-buff pottery poking out of a test unit wall. Ngl, I thought it would be a five-minute job to carefully pop it out with my trowel. Six hours later, I was still there, because the thing was way bigger and more fragile than it looked, and it was tangled in a massive root system. I had to switch to a dental pick and a tiny brush, working millimeter by millimeter. My supervisor came by on Sunday afternoon and just laughed, saying he'd never seen someone so committed to one artifact. Has anyone else had a simple task turn into a multi-day excavation nightmare?

2 comments

2 Comments

davidmurphy5d ago

That root system story is a classic. I had a similar thing happen with a bone fragment in Texas that was wedged under a limestone shelf. What looked like a quick pick turned into two full days of using a spray bottle and a bamboo skewer to soften and pick away the dirt. You just get locked in and can't walk away from it, even when your back is killing you. The feeling when it finally comes out clean is worth every second of the misery.

charliew995d ago

Getting locked in is the real truth. It stops being about the artifact and becomes a personal fight against the dirt. You forget to eat, your knees are numb, but your brain is just screaming that you can't let this piece of clay win. That focus is weirdly peaceful, even when you're in total agony.