Opinions Matter

c/archaeology-discoveries

32

ryanj60•10h ago

That old pottery shard I almost tossed turned out to be 800 years old

I found this weird piece of painted clay in my backyard near Austin last summer and nearly chucked it in the trash, but a buddy from UT’s anthro department looked at it and said it’s from a prehistoric Caddo vessel. Made me wonder how many legit artifacts get thrown away by accident - has anyone else had a close call like that?

5

gonzalez.grant•21h ago

Just realized I had been misdating pottery shards for years

Always thought rim thickness was the quick way to date pottery. Mentor kept pushing temper and firing marks instead. Then last month in New Mexico I pulled two shards from the same layer with nearly matching rims but one had crushed quartz and the other had sand. Lab dating showed the quartz one was Pueblo III the sand was early Colonial time. Realized I'd been misreading the whole site for 4 years. Anyone else stick to a bad method too long?

12

anthony_jenkins61•2d ago

I think the Kennewick Man repatriation was a loss for science

I remember when the first reconstructions of Kennewick Man came out in the late 1990s. The face looked nothing like modern Native Americans, more like a guy you'd see on the street in Europe. But over 20 years, the pressure from tribal groups to rebury him kept building until it happened in 2017. And now we can't study him anymore. I get that tribes have claims under NAGPRA, but in my experience, we lost a huge chance to learn about early migration patterns. The skull shape and the spear point lodged in his hip told a different story than what most people want to hear. Has anyone else felt like we rushed to bury evidence just to avoid conflict?

20

nancy824•3d ago

That fake ancient coin I bought off eBay for $120 still stings

I got into collecting Roman coins a few months ago (a cheap hobby, I thought), and I saw a listing for what looked like a perfect denarius from 32 BC. The seller had good reviews and the photo showed nice detail, so I jumped on it without doing my homework. When it arrived, the metal felt too light and the edges were way too sharp, like it was cast rather than struck. I took it to a local coin shop downtown, and the guy there laughed and said it was a modern replica made in some Chinese factory. I lost 120 bucks on that thing, and now I keep it on my desk as a reminder to always check for patina and strike marks. Has anyone else gotten burned by an online artifact scam like that?

24

parker_jones50•3d ago

That 2,000 year old Roman dodecahedron still bugs me more than it should

I mean, I get that not every artifact has a clear use, but come on - we've found over 100 of these things across Europe and nobody can agree on what they were for. Has anyone here actually seen one in person or handled a replica to test a theory?

18

gibson.robert•5d ago

I tried digging a test pit in my backyard and hit a buried stone wall

Last month I finally got around to digging a small test pit in my backyard near Richmond, VA, just to see if anything was in the ground before I put in a garden. I picked a spot about 3 feet from the old fence line and went down maybe 18 inches. Right as I was about to give up, my shovel hit something hard that sounded hollow when I scraped it. I cleared away some dirt and found a roughly stacked fieldstone wall going deeper. I got excited thinking it might be an old foundation from the 1800s, but after checking with a local archaeologist I know, he said it's probably just a collapsed retaining wall from the 1950s when they built the neighborhood. Still, I learned how easy it is to misread a basic stone feature as something ancient. Has anyone else here thought they found something major only to have a reality check?

8

ray324•6d ago

A Roman pottery shard from a dig near Bath made me rethink everything about dating layers

I was at a field school last August near Bath and the instructor pointed out how mixing from a bad seed drill layer threw off our whole timeline by almost 200 years. How do you guys handle disturbed contexts without just tossing everything out?

22

jones.blake•6d ago

Found a Roman coin in a field near the village where I grew up last October

I was metal detecting with my uncle on his farm when we pulled up this little bronze coin that turned out to be from 300 AD, and now I'm wondering if anyone knows how to tell if there's more stuff buried nearby without spending a fortune on ground-penetrating radar.

13

max_ramirez48•10d ago

My pottery sherd sorting got way faster after a weird tip from a retired geologist

I was spending hours on end trying to separate Roman-era pottery from medieval stuff at a site near Chester last month, mixing up similar glazes left and right. Then an old guy who used to work with soil samples told me to lick the sherds - apparently wetting them brings out way better color and texture differences, and it actually worked on about 60% of my tricky pieces. Has anyone else tried this or got a better field trick for quick identification?

2

lee627•10d ago

Finally got a trench profile to stop crumbling with a $4 spray bottle trick

I was fighting these sandy soil layers at a site near Pecos, New Mexico for weeks. Every time I tried to clean a profile face for photos, it would just flake and slide right off. Then I read some old field notes from 1982 that said to mist the face lightly with water and a tiny bit of white glue. One spray from a cheap bottle and the whole thing held together perfect for the camera. Anyone else ran into loose dirt making your excavation shots useless?

7

piper_flores69•10d ago

Hit a 2000-year-old wall with a shovel and learned a lesson the hard way

I was digging test pits on a site near Richmond last fall and my shovel hit something solid that rang like a bell. Turned out I had found a Roman-era foundation, but I also chipped a chunk off a corner because I wasn't using a trowel for the last few inches. Anyone else ever ruin a find by getting impatient with the tools?

27

emmam67•25d ago

Saw a thing about Roman concrete lasting 2,000 years because of hot mixing with lime clasts

I was watching some YouTube video about ancient Roman structures last night and they said their concrete actually heals itself over time from cracks forming. Turns out they mixed quicklime directly into the mix instead of slaking it first like we do now. Has anyone else looked into this or tried replicating it for modern work?

10

viola_butler•25d ago

Spent $350 on a ground penetrating radar rental and found absolutely nothing

I rented a GPR unit for a weekend to scan my backyard before building a patio, hoping to find old foundation walls from a 1800s farmhouse. All I got was a pile of data showing roots and rocks, zero artifacts or cool history. Has anyone else shelled out for fancy gear and come up empty handed?

12

matthewsullivan•26d ago

Dropped $600 on a metal detector that finds nothing but bottle caps

I got into the whole detecting hobby after watching some YouTube channel find Roman coins in a field. Bought a Garrett AT Pro for $600 thinking I'd be pulling up ancient artifacts by the weekend. Three months later, I've dug up about 200 bottle caps, 50 pull tabs, and one rusty horseshoe from a park near my house in Cleveland. The thing screams at every piece of trash and I spend hours digging junk. Anyone else get hyped by detector videos and end up with a yard full of holes?

27

matthewsullivan•26d ago

Last month in Arizona I saw a dig crew using ground penetrating radar and it made me wonder

They found what looks like a Hohokam ballcourt near Phoenix without ever breaking ground, just based on the scans. Has anyone else seen these GPR setups actually pan out at smaller sites or is it mostly for the big budget projects?

12

gibson.robert•28d ago

Debated between carbon dating and tree rings for a Viking site in Greenland...

I went with tree rings for dating that Norse farm near Brattahlid because carbon dating has a wider margin of error for that period. Paid off when the rings matched up to a known volcanic eruption in 986 AD exactly. Has anyone else had better luck with one method over the other on older sites?

15

the_sandra•28d ago

Found a Roman coin in my backyard last Saturday...

I was just digging a hole for a new rose bush in my backyard in Chester, UK and my spade hit something hard. Pulled out this small bronze coin that I thought was just junk at first. Took it to a local archaeologist I know and he said it's a Roman sestertius from around 150 AD. He said the emperor on it might be Antoninus Pius which is wild because I've never found anything old than a 1960s bottle cap before. The condition is rough but you can still see the outline of a figure on one side. I spent the whole rest of the day just staring at it and wondering who dropped it there 1,800 years ago. Has anyone else ever stumbled on something ancient completely by accident? I still can't believe it happened to me.

12

fiona330•29d ago

Paid $60 for a 'proven' dig site map from a retired archaeologist

The map led me to an empty field in Kentucky where the only thing I found was a rusted tractor part, so is paying for insider info ever worth it or are we all just chasing ghosts?

18

ryanj60•29d ago

Chatted with a field archaeologist in Montana and he turned my whole view of pottery upside down

I was at a diner near Billings last month and sat next to a guy who'd been digging on the Crow Reservation for 15 years. He told me most people think broken pottery is just trash, but he can read a site's whole story from a single rim sherd shape and temper type. He showed me photos of a cooking pot he'd pieced back together from 43 fragments, each one telling him something about trade routes or family size. It hit me different because I always just saw old pots as artifacts, not as everyday tools people used and broke and lived with. Have any of you had a conversation with someone in the field that completely changed how you look at something basic?

7

jesse290•1mo ago

Unpopular opinion: maybe we shouldn't date pottery by style alone

I was helping a buddy dig a test pit near Santa Fe last weekend and we pulled a shard that looked exactly like a classic Anasazi design from 1100 AD. But the dirt layer around it had a piece of 1800s bottle glass mixed in from a rodent burrow, so now I'm wondering how many museum pieces are dated wrong. One side says style is reliable because potters didn't change much over centuries, the other says we've got too many examples of later copies and reuses. What's your take, have you ever seen a site where style and carbon dating didn't line up?

1

abby_chen•1mo ago

That dig in Sedona where my trowel handle snapped in half

I was out near Sedona last Saturday working on a small pit house excavation when my trusty trowel handle just cracked right off during a tricky scraping motion. The metal head flew into the dirt and I spent 20 minutes digging it out with my fingers because I didn't bring a backup. Has anyone else had a tool fail on them at the worst possible moment and what did you use as a replacement in the field?

7

the_betty•1mo ago

Just read that the oldest known wooden structure predates modern humans by 200,000 years

I stumbled on a paper about the Kalambo Falls excavation in Zambia and found out those logs with cut marks are from 476,000 years ago, way before Homo sapiens even showed up. How do archaeologists even date wood that old without it rotting to dust?

-1

lily230•1mo ago

TIL that a 12th century well in Jerusalem had a secret staircase underneath it

I was reading this article from the Israel Antiquities Service last week and it blew my mind. They found a well that people used for hundreds of years, but when they dug deeper they found a hidden staircase leading to a huge underground water chamber. Apparently it was built by the Crusaders or maybe even earlier, and the well was just the entrance. The really wild part is that locals had no idea it was there even though they drew water from that spot every day for generations. I guess it shows how much stuff is still hiding right under our feet in old cities. Has anyone else run into a discovery where people were using something for years and had no clue what was underneath?

16

cole_hall•1mo ago

Finally saw why people dig up old privy pits. Changed my mind.

Used to think digging old outhouses was dumb. Then a buddy found a full 1880s medicine bottle in his second pit last month and I witnessed the whole thing. Anyone else get converted on a specific dig?

8

troy_palmer76•1mo ago

Paid $80 for a ground penetrating radar scan on my property before digging a fence line

Found an old cistern from the 1800s three feet down that would have swallowed my post hole digger whole, has anyone else hit something unexpected with one of those?