Spent 6 months trying to date a single pottery shard from a dig in New Mexico, and it turned out to be from a 1980s souvenir mug

I kept running carbon tests on this supposedly ancient piece, and it took three different labs to finally admit the glaze had modern chemicals that should have been obvious from the start - has anyone else accidentally studied junk artifacts for way too long?

3 comments

3 Comments

roberts953d ago

35 years back I spent almost a year studying a "Roman coin" that turned out to be a 1970s tourist token from a gas station in Nevada. The patina was just shoe polish and dirt mixed together, which should have tipped me off after the first acid test. Lab work is only as good as the person asking the right questions from the start.

ray_campbell463d agoTop Commenter

A buddy of mine once spent a month cleaning paint off what he thought was Michelangelo's palette, @roberts95. Nope. 1950s paint-by-numbers set.

ryantorres3d ago

My buddy Dave spent six months cleaning what he thought was a 13th century illuminated manuscript page, only to find out it was a coloring book insert from a 1994 Pizza Hut kids meal. The "gold leaf" was just metallic crayon and the aging was coffee stains from the franchise owner's morning cup. He only got suspicious when he tried to date the ink and it smelled faintly of pepperoni.