Bagged 50 plus pieces of flint at a dig in Dorset last month and the curator went nuts

We were clearing a trench near a known Bronze Age site and I pulled up a handful of worked flint debris. The curator told me I was handling them wrong, said the oils from my fingers mess with future dating. She made me bag each one separate in plastic and label it. Has anyone else run into strict handling rules that caught you off guard?

3 comments

3 Comments

milarodriguez29d ago

The first time I did a dig I touched a flint with barbecue sauce on my hands and the archaeologist looked like I'd just murdered his cat. Oops.

the_mary29d ago

Wait, hold on. BARBECUE SAUCE?! You were eating barbecue while handling artifacts straight out of the dirt? That's like, a whole new level of crazy I didn't know existed. I am genuinely shocked that you would even think to have sauce on your hands near anything that old and fragile. The poor archaeologist's face must have been a sight to behold though, probably caught somewhere between pure horror and absolute disbelief. Honestly, I'm just glad you didn't accidentally lick it or something, because that would have been a whole other disaster.

parkerbrown29d ago

Touched a flint with barbecue sauce on my hands" is probably the most relatable thing I've read all week, because I once accidentally cleaned a fossil with ketchup on my fingers and thought the volunteer coordinator was gonna faint. You'd think common sense would kick in before the sauce, but nope, we just proved that some of us are a hazard to history one messy snack at a time. At least you didn't try to wipe it off on your jeans, which I absolutely did and still got side-eyed for a full hour.