Does proper context change how you interpret an artifact? My mentor made me rethink everything.

I was working on a dig in southern New Mexico last summer, and we found this cool obsidian blade. My first thought was it looked like a simple cutting tool, like everyone says. But my mentor, Dr. Reyes, pointed out it was buried right next to a fire pit with rabbit bones, and the wear marks suggested it was used for scraping hides, not slicing meat. She said I was seeing what I expected, not what the data showed. That critique hit hard, and now I always look at soil layers and associated finds before jumping to a label. It changed how I catalog everything, even common items like pottery sherds. Has a specific piece of feedback ever totally shifted your view of a find?

2 comments

2 Comments

val_williams6d ago

Wait, wait, hold on. That comment about wear marks being for scraping hides not slicing meat? That just blew my mind a little. I've been doing this for about eight years now as a volunteer at a local historical society, and I swear I've probably mislabeled half my finds from the last few years because I was so focused on what I thought they were. I had this whole collection of what I called 'arrowheads' from a site near the river, but a friend pointed out the bases were all wrong for projectiles. She showed me how the edges were dulled from scraping wood, not piercing. It was like someone flipped a switch in my brain, now I can't unsee it. Your mentor sounds like a real pro, I wish I had someone like that to set me straight earlier.

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the_xena6d ago

Totally crazy how we see what we expect to see instead of what's actually there.