My pottery shard cleaning method ruined a 2,000 year old find

I tried using a wire brush on some Roman pottery shards from a dig near Bath, thinking I was being thorough. Turns out that brush scratched off the maker's mark that would have dated the piece exactly. The site supervisor saw it and told me, 'We clean with soft tools for a reason.' Took me 4 hours of careful work to undo the damage with bamboo picks and water. Anyone else wreck a small part of a dig before you learned the proper technique?

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the_lee5d ago

Ripped the paint right off a medieval floor tile once with a steel scraper. Spent the whole afternoon trying to glue the flakes back on. Supervisor just shook his head and handed me a toothbrush.