A bad dig day in Vermont changed my whole view on pottery shards

Last October I spent a whole Saturday on a site near Burlington and came up with nothing but tiny, broken pottery pieces. I used to think those little fragments were basically worthless, just clutter you bag up and forget. But then the field director, a woman named Carla, grabbed one piece and showed me the fingerprint still pressed into the clay from whoever made it thousands of years ago. That single detail, that personal mark, made me realize every shard is a clue about daily life, not just a broken artifact. We ended up cataloging 214 pieces that day, and by the end I was the one arguing we should keep even the smallest ones for analysis. Now I actually get excited when I find a rough edge or a weird glaze. Has anyone else had a moment where a boring find suddenly became the most interesting thing on the site?

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derek_burns7d ago

Wasn't that fingerprint basically a high five from some ancient stranger?