You just shrug and wash on

The second and third week is the high life of ceramic finds in the lab. The situation is the following: 2 crates of unwashed pottery, 3 crates of shards waiting to be processed and 9 crates of processed pottery. The excitement is concentrated on the huge amount of ceramics, but also the special vessels, which slow down the usual rhythm of pottery washing and processing. The impact of this experience sometimes is so strong, that it leads to confessions, which should be shared. Peter’s day spent in the lab resulted in thoughts as the following.

“Whenever I enter the laboratory I’m at first overwhelmed by the sheer mass of pottery shards which is stored there, waiting in plastic bags and covered with dirt all over their surface. Once you stumble upon an exceptional shard whose appearance bears a certain amount of significance, you stand up and make your way downstairs to the small find team, whilst the others look up from the sinks in front of them and try to hide their jealousy. You slam the door and run. You hit your head as you have reached the stairway, but finally you hand your discovery over to the small find team which thinks it’s worth mentioning it somewhere.”

After the cleaning process follows the quantification of pottery, this meaning that the shards are selected by morphological parts and functional categories, as a result we have a record of how much and what kind of pottery we are dealing with. The identifiable vessels are further analyzed and drawn, for some of them we find analogies, some can be dated, all contributing to a better understanding the meaning of ceramics in the Roman era.