Nothing Is Quite As Tragically Funny To Me As How Finds Are Treated On Site Vs In A Museum Setting.

Nothing is quite as tragically funny to me as how finds are treated on site vs in a museum setting.

In a trench on a dig site: oh look another undecorated pottery sherd. The hundredth from this trench today! *holds with bare hands, covered in mud* nice, where’s the cassetto? YEET! I’ll clean that with a worn out plastic toothbrush in a bucket of water later. Another sherd? Oh damn, it’s from the wrong SO layer - into the spoils heap you go :(

The same pottery sherd, in a museum: so we need to sign this sherd out to examine it in a temperature controlled room. I’m going to wear powder free gloves and hold it with two hands no more than an inch above the padded surface of this table because I’d rather die than have any harm befall this sherd.

Or, in other words:

No hate to either museum-based archaeologists or field archaeologists. I have done both.

Also this is not to say I condone this. This is just a representation of the absolute whiplash my mostly-museum based arse got upon seeing how things were done on my first dig.