Just realized I'd been misidentifying pottery sherds for years

I was sorting through some finds from a dig near Santa Fe and kept labeling everything as Ancestral Puebloan. Then a colleague pointed out the temper material was totally wrong for that region and era. Anyone else have a moment where a simple detail made you rethink your whole identification process?

2 comments

2 Comments

rivera.keith14d ago

Boy do I feel that, spent a decade calling volcanic rock "basalt" before someone corrected me.

the_abby14d ago

Three years I spent calling every dark rock I found "shale" on geology hikes. Turned out I was pointing at slate the whole time. My buddy finally pulled me aside and was like "dude, you can see the cleavage planes." Felt like such an idiot but hey, we all start somewhere with rocks.