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That old professor in New Mexico who told me to stop cleaning pottery with water
He said I was washing away residues that could tell us what was inside the pot 800 years ago, and I still think about that every time I pick up a brush.
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leeknight2d ago
...and honestly that's the kind of lesson that sticks with you forever, but I gotta push back a LITTLE on the water thing. Most archaeologists I've worked with say a little bit of distilled water and a SOFT brush is actually fine for most pottery - it's the scrubbing and soaking that really messes up the residues. Your professor wasn't totally wrong though, because some pots DO have organic residues like fats or pollen that water can wash right off. The trick is knowing which pots have those residues and which ones are just crusted with dirt.
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rivershah20h ago
Man, back in 2011 at the Fort Bliss conservation lab, we had this one guy who used tap water on a Mimbres bowl that still had pigment residue. Straight up ruined the design. The water reacted with the minerals in the clay and caused this white crust. So yeah, distilled water is the safe bet, but I think the bigger problem nobody mentions is that even distilled water can mess up a pot if the clay is really fragile or waterlogged. Some of those sherds feel solid dry but turn to slush the second they get wet. I've seen it happen.
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anthonykim2d ago
Three times in the first month I got yelled at by different professors for using tap water on shards. @leeknight is right though, I learned later that distilled water is basically the standard unless you're digging up a cooking pot that still has animal fat crusted on the inside. That old guy in New Mexico was probably just tired of seeing undergrads dunking everything in a bucket like it's dish day at a diner.
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