TIL pottery shards can tell you more than whole pots

I always thought complete artifacts were the gold standard. But last month at a dig near Santa Fe, we pulled up a basket of broken rim pieces from a trash pit. The site director got excited because the wear patterns showed how people actually used the bowls daily. It made me realize a chip or a crack tells a real story about human behavior. Has anyone else had their thinking flipped by something broken?

2 comments

2 Comments

casey_barnes6d ago

That's actually really cool how a broken piece can tell more about real life than a perfect pot. Kind of makes you think about all the imperfections we overlook.

laura2116d ago

Yeah that part about "imperfections we overlook" really got me thinking @casey_barnes. It's like how we all try to make our lives look perfect on the surface but the real stuff is in the cracks and mistakes. I notice this with old buildings in my neighborhood too. The ones with cracks in the walls or peeling paint have way more character than the new cookie cutter ones. We spend so much time trying to hide our flaws when they're actually what make things interesting and real.