Spent 3 hours trying to date a pottery shard before realizing I was looking at a broken flower pot from the 1980s

I picked up this shard near a creek behind my house and swore it was prehistoric based on the temper, but after comparing it with local site reports and asking a guy at the state archaeology office, it turned out to be from a cheap planter my neighbor threw out 40 years ago. Anyone else waste time on modern trash thinking it's ancient?

2 comments

2 Comments

ross.felix24d ago

The temper on modern flower pots can look deceivingly similar to some low-fired prehistoric wares, especially if there's a lot of sand mixed in with the clay. I've made the same mistake with a couple of pieces that turned out to be 1950s drainage pipe fragments. One thing I learned is to check for a uniform, machine-made color all the way through the break - the good stuff usually has a visible darker core from the firing process. Also, if the piece is completely straight or has a really sharp, perfect curve, it's almost certainly a modern machine-pressed item. At least you didn't spend a week trying to reconstruct the thing like I did once, that was a real bummer.

parker_thomas25d ago

I spent a whole afternoon once going through a box of old bottles I found in a barn, convinced I had a stash of 1800s soda bottles. Turned out most of them were from the 1970s, maybe even early 80s. What helped me was taking a close look at the manufacturing marks on the bottom - the seams on the glass were too perfect and the color was too uniform for old hand-blown stuff. I also checked a website called the Society for Historical Archaeology's guide to bottle dating, which has a chart of patent dates and mold seams. Kinda bummed me out at first, but now I just laugh about it and keep it as a reminder to look for those tiny details.