4 - Life in the Pot Shed

Summary

Introduction

In this section we look at the stages by which pottery is collected from an excavation or field project, and how it is identified, recorded and analysed before, eventually, being consigned to storage in a museum or archaeological resource centre. Under mainly commercial pressures, practice in the UK has become more diverse in recent years. For example, many archaeological teams have centralised their post-excavation work in a headquarters building, and some urban ones may ‘outsource’ some stages, such as pot-washing, to local residents. Nevertheless, it is still worth considering what is involved in setting up the ‘finds’ side of an excavation project in some detail.

The first stage is to set up a base, but this is quickly followed by the adoption of a retrieval strategy – to sieve or not to sieve. There are occasions where one deliberately does not collect all the pottery present in a deposit, and the rules governing collection policy are discussed next. We then look at the way in which finds are processed and the initial sorting of pottery from other finds. At this stage it is common for there to be a preliminary viewing of the pottery, referred to here as spot-dating. There may, however, be a considerable interval after this point before serious analysis of the collection begins, which may be formalised as an assessment stage (see Chapter 3). We start by looking at the typical flow of work, from laying out the collection to its identification and recording, and then look at the range of further analyses and processes which may be required for specific sherds. Finally, we look at the structure of the pottery records, the use of computers in data storage and analysis and the integration of pottery records with other databases.