TIL a pot sherd in my hand was the last thing someone touched 800 years ago

Faith Jones · 2026-10-24T13:45:05.172801+00:00

Helping sift a test unit outside Santa Fe, I pulled out a plain black-on-white rim sherd and the volunteer next to me, a retired mail carrier named Rosa, pointed at a faint smudge of finger ridges near the lip. She handed me her lens and said it dried before the pot ever got fired, so that was the maker's thumb print, still there. I sat with it a while because I'd handled hundreds of sherds before and never once thought of them as a person's hand at work. What small detail on a find has stuck with you longer than the object itself?

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TIL a pot sherd in my hand was the last thing someone touched 800 years ago | Archaeology Discoveries - Librear