Just catalogued my 1000th artifact from the Wupatki site

I was working through a box of pottery sherds from the 1960s Wupatki dig in Arizona and my database hit 1000 entries. It felt big because it's a full record of one field season's finds that was just sitting in a drawer. Has anyone else hit a cataloguing number that made a site's story click for them?

3 comments

3 Comments

morgan.joseph2mo ago

Cataloguing always makes me think of a box of old survey maps we found in a back room. They were from a highway project that never got built in the 70s. Seeing all those hand drawn plots together, it wasn't just paper. It showed how much work went into a plan that just got shelved. Felt like finding ghosts.

the_river15d ago

Those survey maps were probably part of the 1970s environmental studies required by the new NEPA laws. That shelf date might actually mean they did the work specifically to prove the project wasn't viable, so those plots are ghosts of a decision, not a forgotten plan.

the_nathan2mo ago

My friend found a box of 300 letters from WW2 soldiers in a library basement. Reading them all together, you could feel the whole base waiting to ship out.