Hot take: everyone raves about the 3,000 year old mummies but nobody cares about the 47 broken potsherds we cataloged last week

I hit 500 pottery fragments from that one trench at the Tel Beth Shean dig and that matters more than a flashy mummy because those sherds tell us actual daily life patterns instead of just how rich people died.

3 comments

3 Comments

lucasking2mo ago

Wait wait wait, you hit 500 pieces from just one trench? That is absolutely insane and I am honestly jealous of the sheer volume of data you're sitting on right now. People sleep on those sherds but you're literally holding fragments of someone's breakfast bowl from 3,000 years ago and that is way more personal than a wrapped up body.

derek_brown282mo ago

Ngl @lucasking you get it completely. One time I was cleaning a pile of sherds from a late Bronze Age layer and I found one with a thumbprint still pressed into the clay. Right there in the handle groove. Some guy 3,200 years ago grabbed that pot fresh out of the kiln and left his mark. That’s way more real than any linen bandage.

claireo6721d ago

Hold on, @lucasking @derek_brown28, I gotta push back on that. Mummies aren't just about how rich people died, they tell us about what they ate, what diseases they had, how they lived. You're right that a thumbprint on a sherd is personal, but a mummy is the actual person. I've seen mummies with tattoos, with tools still in their hands, with hair that shows their diet. That's way more direct than a stack of broken bowls. For example, one mummy I studied had a healed leg fracture that showed us how they set bones back then. A sherd just shows you someone made a pot.