Vent: The day I dropped a 4,000 year old pot in the Jordan Valley

We were on a dig near Jericho, cataloging finds from a Bronze Age house floor. My hands were numb from the morning chill, and I was moving a small storage jar to the cleaning station. It slipped. Just a plain brown pot, but intact. Hit the edge of the table and shattered into maybe fifteen pieces. My stomach dropped. The site director just stared for a full ten seconds. We spent the next four hours on our knees, using tweezers and brushes to collect every single fragment. Got them all, I think. The conservator back at camp said she could fix it, but the stress lines will always show. Ever had a find just fall apart in your hands?

2 comments

2 Comments

hart.ryan12d ago

Feel that sick drop in your gut just reading this. Makes you wonder if the pot was always meant to break right then, like its own little end of an era. Those stress lines the conservator can't hide, they're now part of its real story, not just the one we dig up. Kind of adds a whole human layer to it, doesn't it?

lopez.ivan12d ago

Tell me about it, I once dropped a whole box of my grandma's plates. Guess I was just adding some modern stress lines to the family history.