The curse of the 'quick identification' on a 12 hour dig

I spent an entire afternoon trying to match a tiny stamped handle fragment to a known pottery type from a local museum's online database. The pattern looked obvious at first, but every photo I compared had a slightly different rim curve or glaze shade. Turns out it was a regional knockoff of a popular Roman design, not the real thing at all. Google only gave me hits for the famous version, so I finally had to email a specialist in York who answered in 3 days and set me straight. Has anyone else burned a whole day on a misidentification that a pro solved in seconds?

2 comments

2 Comments

wyatt86211d ago

That process of elimination is exactly what separates real field experience from lazy pattern matching, so the time spent was the point, not the problem.

michaelrodriguez11d ago

Fair point @wyatt862, but I see it more as burning time twice. You can learn the process without taking the long way every single time. Sometimes the shortcut only works because someone else already tripped over the stuff you're avoiding.