Lab Work, End of Class

While I enjoyed taking a break from the physical labors of digging, and not having to dig in the rain, I can not say that I enjoy the lab portion of the class. What mainly gives me this opinion is trying to classify and date ceramic pieces. Most of the pieces were plain white and very small. The ones that were a bit larger or had some sort of design were still difficult to learn about. There was only one piece with a makers mark, but it was only a partial one. No one could even agree on what it was. Some thought that it was a shaggy dog and some a lion, so comparing it to makers marks in books was of little help especially since the majority of similar makers marks consisted of lions and unicorns. The pieces with designs were difficult because there was no book with just patterns or examples of pottery, plates, cups, etc. These books were just of makers marks or other such information. I found the whole process to be very frustrating. I prefered weighing the contents of the bags and imputting the information into the excel sheets, but I mostly just prefered being outside at the site.

I had a great time this quarter and enjoyed meeting so many new people. I hope that everyone has a good summer!