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Entry tags:
FINGERPRINTS.
Guys. I have nineteenth-century fingerprints in my living room.
I don't know what these things are, these little pinched bits of clay, maybe just toys or wasters; but there's two of them, and an obvious chip off a third (maybe more chips that I put in a different pile before I noticed), but there's something oddly familiar about them, like I've seen them before and I should know their purpose.
Maybe it's just that I've done that myself when playing with clay, which I have. Hmm.
So, this is what I'm doing for the artifact analysis part of my internship: describing and inventorying potsherds collected from a local site in 2002. This mostly consists of taking notes on every piece and putting them in a spreadsheet. (I also have another pile from a different site in 2007 (which I actually helped excavate), and I would dearly love to do both and make some comparisons, but as I need to return the artifacts on Tuesday - and I have many other things to do - I doubt I'll have the time, alas.)
This particular site is a brick kiln and pottery near Morrisonville, attributed to a free black potter named Ned Davis. I have conflicting reports about whether this was in the 1790s or ~1860s, or possibly there were potters there at both times. Davis though is pretty definitely from the later estimate.
But anyway: I have his fingerprints in my living room. How awesome is that?
Here's my "work area," aka nearly all packed-up living room. The postal scale is not really precise enough (no finer than 1 g) and the brass calipers, though new and awesome, are misaligned by about half a millimeter. I *really* need to set up a work area with better lighting when I get to MA. And, of course, what you can't see, is Star Trek DVDs on in the background.
My shiny new lighted loupe goes a ways toward solving the lighting problem! I've got piles of glazed redware, unglazed redware, creamware, and fingerprints. Misc/unidentifiable is in the bag, I'll sort through it last. There were some quartz flakes in there that looked suspiciously manufactured ...
To finish this up with some Internet Cat Pictures, here are places Bingley has found to Sit Upon now that they're cleared of stuff:
The Kitchen Window
Dining Room Bookshelf
I tried to meet people in Waterford today, but got there too late (or else they were invisible). Oh well; I had a nice drive through the town and along Old Waterford Road anyway! I saw lots and lots of baby (well, teenage) geese, some deer, a cat, and lots of birds and cows and horses.
I don't know what these things are, these little pinched bits of clay, maybe just toys or wasters; but there's two of them, and an obvious chip off a third (maybe more chips that I put in a different pile before I noticed), but there's something oddly familiar about them, like I've seen them before and I should know their purpose.
Maybe it's just that I've done that myself when playing with clay, which I have. Hmm.
So, this is what I'm doing for the artifact analysis part of my internship: describing and inventorying potsherds collected from a local site in 2002. This mostly consists of taking notes on every piece and putting them in a spreadsheet. (I also have another pile from a different site in 2007 (which I actually helped excavate), and I would dearly love to do both and make some comparisons, but as I need to return the artifacts on Tuesday - and I have many other things to do - I doubt I'll have the time, alas.)
This particular site is a brick kiln and pottery near Morrisonville, attributed to a free black potter named Ned Davis. I have conflicting reports about whether this was in the 1790s or ~1860s, or possibly there were potters there at both times. Davis though is pretty definitely from the later estimate.
But anyway: I have his fingerprints in my living room. How awesome is that?
Here's my "work area," aka nearly all packed-up living room. The postal scale is not really precise enough (no finer than 1 g) and the brass calipers, though new and awesome, are misaligned by about half a millimeter. I *really* need to set up a work area with better lighting when I get to MA. And, of course, what you can't see, is Star Trek DVDs on in the background.
My shiny new lighted loupe goes a ways toward solving the lighting problem! I've got piles of glazed redware, unglazed redware, creamware, and fingerprints. Misc/unidentifiable is in the bag, I'll sort through it last. There were some quartz flakes in there that looked suspiciously manufactured ...
To finish this up with some Internet Cat Pictures, here are places Bingley has found to Sit Upon now that they're cleared of stuff:
The Kitchen Window
Dining Room Bookshelf
I tried to meet people in Waterford today, but got there too late (or else they were invisible). Oh well; I had a nice drive through the town and along Old Waterford Road anyway! I saw lots and lots of baby (well, teenage) geese, some deer, a cat, and lots of birds and cows and horses.
no subject
(Cats are experts at Sitting, I've found =3)
no subject
She sits and sits and sits and sits, and that's what makes a Gumbie Cat!
:D
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OMG! CALIPERS! tehe. That's one impressive pile of sherds too. Poor you having to stick them in a database though. I hated doing that.
Good luck with it!
no subject
Calipers are the best. I miss the super-accurate ones I used years ago at the space systems lab, but these brass ones will do!
Honestly I'm just sort of playing it by ear with the spreadsheet .. Hmm.