Finally figured out how to spot Viking Age pottery shards after years of just finding random rock pieces

For the longest time I was digging up stuff near York and throwing out actual pottery fragments thinking they were just broken stones. A retired archaeologist at the local museum showed me how to look for the tiny sand inclusions and slightly curved surfaces on even small pieces. Now I can identify them about 80% of the time and it feels like a superpower. Anyone else have a trick that clicked for them after struggling for years?

3 comments

3 Comments

ellis.faith1mo ago

Has that ever happened where you spend years tripping over something before someone shows you what's actually in front of your face? I did the same thing with old bottle glass down by the river near my place. Thought I was just finding pretty green pebbles until a glassblower told me to look for the little bubbles and that distinct "soda lime" feel on the surface. Now I can't help picking up every glint of it. Makes me wonder what else I've been walking past all these years, probably a roman coin in my own backyard at this rate.

hollyl251mo ago

Is it weird how once you finally see something, you can't unsee it though? I feel like that happens with so much stuff in daily life, not just digging up old things. Like how you never notice the pattern on your wallpaper until someone points out it's a certain flower, then it's all you see. Makes you wonder what else our brains just filter out because we don't know to look for it... probably a lot more than we think.

lewis.terry1mo ago

Whoa, that's such a great feeling when something finally clicks like that! My buddy Dave had a similar thing happen with arrowheads down in Texas. He'd been walking the same creek beds for years finding nothing but broken rocks, then an old timer showed him to look for the sharp edges and the way flint chips have that almost greasy sheen in the sunlight. Now Dave can spot them from like twenty feet away and fills his whole hat with them on a good day. It's funny how once someone points out the one little detail, your brain just rewires itself to see it everywhere.