Hot take: carbon dating is great but pottery typology tells you more about daily life

Ngl, I used to obsess over getting precise radiocarbon dates on every single sherd, but after seeing how a broken pot handle revealed trade routes in a dig near Santa Fe last summer, I've switched to focusing way more on the shape and wear patterns. Anyone else find the human story gets buried under all the hard numbers?

2 comments

2 Comments

jamiegreen5d ago

Totally agree, numbers tell you when but not why people lived the way they did. The worn spots on a handle show you how they actually carried their water jugs every day.

hugos674d ago

That wear pattern stuff is interesting, but I see it the opposite way. The hard numbers are what ground you. Without a solid date range, you can't even know if that handle wear came from daily hauling or from being carried a few hundred miles as a trade item. Pottery shapes get copied and reused across cultures all the time, so a nice jug form doesn't always mean local people made it that way. A radiocarbon date on organic residue or a nearby hearth gives you the anchor you need to even start reading the human story. The shapes and wear tell you about habits, sure, but only if you already know the time period and the bigger picture. Otherwise you're just guessing at stories with no timeline to hold them together.