Why does nobody talk about how fragile old pottery really is once it's been excavated

I dropped a 2,000 year old sherd from a dig in Arizona last weekend because I was using a towel that was too thin, and it split clean in half on the concrete floor of the lab.

2 comments

2 Comments

brooke_nguyen6526d ago

Huh, that's rough but I gotta say I kind of disagree. Those old pots actually hold up pretty well if you know what you're working with. That sherd was probably already cracked or had a weak spot from how it was buried for 2000 years.

gonzalez.rowan26d ago

Oh man, that's such a good point! It's like how people think old tools or furniture are "cheap" just because they're old, but really it's just about knowing how to handle them properly. My dad has this cast iron skillet from the 1950s that people would probably call junk, but he treats it right and it cooks better than anything I've bought new. It's funny how we assume something is fragile just because it's been around a while, when really it's usually the opposite.