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Got a tip from a field supervisor about dating pottery shards
She said the rim profiles tell you more than the decoration, and I spent 3 hours rechecking my whole dig log from last summer. Has anyone else had a senior tech totally change how you look at old ceramics?
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amyr5717d ago
Honestly, rim profiles can be misleading without context from decoration and fabric analysis.
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king.jordan17d ago
Hang on though... what about the way the clay was tempered? I had a field supervisor tell me that crushed shell temper vs sand temper can shift how you read a rim profile entirely. She showed me these two shards from the same site - one with shell temper had this rolled rim that looked like a later style, but the sand tempered one next to it had a sharp carination that dated it earlier. Made me realize you gotta factor in the paste composition before you even start measuring rim angles.
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