Spent two days trying to get a tiny piece of pottery out of a trench wall

I was working a dig near Flagstaff and found a small painted sherd about six inches deep in a very hard clay layer. The problem was my trowel was too wide and my brush was too soft to get it loose without breaking it. I ended up using a dental pick from our conservation kit, working for maybe an hour each morning over two days before it finally came free. Has anyone else had a simple find turn into a major extraction project?

3 comments

3 Comments

noahw531mo ago

Yeah, logansullivan has a point, sometimes you just need to walk away for a minute.

logansullivan1mo ago

Sounds like you made a simple job way too hard.

the_terry6d ago

Logansullivan might not realize how easy it is to overthink a simple task when you're in the thick of it, though. The last time I tried to fix a leaky faucet I spent two hours on YouTube before even touching a wrench (rookie move, I know). Sometimes the "simple" stuff spirals because you want to get it right the first time.