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Question about dating pottery: I was doing it all wrong for 2 years
I help sort finds at a small museum in Tucson and for 2 years I was dating plain red pottery by color alone, which I now know is a mess. A visiting grad student watched me sort a tray from a Hohokam site and asked why I lumped a buff-colored rim with the red ware. Turns out the clay source and firing, not the surface color, is what you check first, and she showed me how to look at the paste with a 10x loupe. I re-did 3 boxes that afternoon and found 14 sherds I had mislabeled. Does anyone here have a simple way to tell plain wares apart without a lab?
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mason.anna1mo ago
Sorting by color alone gets you every time, kind of like how I spent a whole summer convinced two cats in my yard were the same cat until I noticed one had a torn ear. The lesson there was the same as yours, look at the actual details up close instead of trusting the surface. A cheap loupe and good light will do more for you than any lab if you know what you're looking for.
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