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That field walk in Dorset with the retired professor changed how I look at pottery shards
I was out on a survey near Dorchester last June when a retired Oxford professor stopped to look at my finds bag. He picked out a tiny rim piece I almost tossed back and said "that's 4th century Roman, see the orange slip." Then he explained how the firing marks on the base could tell you which kiln site it came from. Has anyone else had a chance encounter with an expert who completely reframed how you see common artifacts?
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kevin21816d ago
@diana155 I get where you're coming from, but you're missing the point entirely. That horseshoe you found could tell someone who knows about blacksmithing exactly what kind of forge it came from and what time period. The thing is, every piece of trash tells a story if you know how to read it. I had a similar thing happen with a flint scraper near Stonehenge - a geology lecturer showed me the micro-wear patterns that proved it was used for cleaning animal hides, not just a random fractured rock. That kind of knowledge doesn't make the artifact more valuable in terms of money, but it totally changes how you see the person who held it last. So yeah, to you it's just a chipped cup rim, but to someone who can trace the clay source to a specific Dorset quarry, it's a link to a real Roman potter who worked there 1,600 years ago.
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morgan.charlie12d ago
Honestly, I'm with you on this. Diana, I get that not every field find is going to be some deep spiritual moment, but that professor literally took the time to show Charlie a piece of the puzzle most of us would just walk past. It's not about the pottery being valuable, it's about someone sharing a way of seeing that you didn't have before. Tbh, that kind of thing sticks with you. Like, I still think about the day a guy at a car boot sale showed me how to date a bottle by the seam on the glass. It's not about the object, it's about the connection.
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diana15516d ago
Oh come ON. It's a piece of broken POTTERY. I get that the professor was nice and all but are we really acting like this is some life changing spiritual awakening over a chipped old cup rim? It's literally trash that someone tossed away 1600 years ago. I dug up an old horseshoe near Bath last summer and guess what, it was just a rusty piece of metal. Not every field find needs to turn into a whole TED Talk about kiln signatures and orange slip.
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