A museum curator told me to always check the soil in old pots... saved my bacon last week

I was digging at a site near Tucson last Saturday and found a broken pot. I almost just bagged it up with the rest of the sherds, but I remembered what the curator at the Arizona State Museum said. She told me to always sift the dirt from inside any vessel. I found 3 tiny turquoise beads and a piece of shell in the bottom. Has anyone else found random stuff hiding in old pottery?

3 comments

3 Comments

reesel5024d ago

Check the rim too, I found a stashed arrowhead crammed in the clay of a bowl lip.

the_xena24d ago

Oh man, "stashed arrowhead crammed in the clay of a bowl lip" - that's wild. People don't realize how creative folks got back then with hiding stuff. They'd tuck things in the most random spots, probably hoping no one would ever think to look there. You gotta wonder if the person who stashed it forgot about it or just never got a chance to come back for it. Either way, finding something like that is a hell of a rush.

susan_wright3424d ago

That curator tip is solid gold. Heard from a guy at a conference that a whole cache of obsidian blades was found that way in a pot from New Mexico, and @the_xena is right about that rush - finding stuff no one's touched in centuries is something else.