That dig last month made me change how I clean pottery shards forever

Honestly, I used to just rinse off dirt with a hose and scrub with a soft brush. Then a conservator on a site in Arizona last September caught me doing it and said I was destroying surface details. She showed me how the water was flaking off micro-layers of ancient paint. Now I dry brush everything first with a bamboo stick and only use distilled water if I absolutely have to. Has anyone else had a specialist call them out on basic field methods?

3 comments

3 Comments

terryf6226d ago

100 bucks says that curator's Instagram DM was longer than the analysis report for the whole site. Bet the shards are still dusty in his driveway.

cameron53827d ago

that conservator caught me" - nah but I had a buddy from community college who used to hose off shards in his driveway til a museum curator saw his Instagram story and DMed him a whole essay about pH neutral water. He's team filtered tap only now lol.

vera_murphy27d ago

Hold up, let me play devil's advocate here for a second. A lot of this "you're destroying the artifact" stuff can get overblown in my experience. Most of the shards I've handled over the years were buried in plain dirt, not some delicate museum piece with paint that'll flake off from a gentle rinse. If you're not dealing with something obviously painted or fragile, a quick hose-down with regular tap water and a soft brush gets the dirt off fast without any real damage. I've seen people spend hours dry brushing a plain brown body sherd that's just going into a bag for analysis anyway, and it feels like wasted effort. The key is just being smart about what you're cleaning and not being too rough. Sometimes the "official" method is way more time and fuss than it needs to be for most field situations.