Changed my whole view on that 'empty' field outside Norwich

We were doing a field walk for a uni project, and I was sure the site was picked clean. My buddy insisted we grid a small patch with his trowel anyway. He found a perfect Roman coin about 15cm down, just sitting in the clay. I'd written the whole area off based on the surface finds. Now I grid everything, no matter how boring it looks. Anyone else had a site surprise them like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

angelarivera15d ago

My archaeology prof always said the best stuff hides in plain sight.

alicecraig15d ago

But come on, @angelarivera, isn't that just a fancy way of saying we overlook the boring stuff? Most things in plain sight are just normal things. That old pot in my attic isn't a hidden treasure, it's just a pot my grandma forgot. Sometimes a rock is just a rock, you know? It feels like people want to make everything into a big mystery when it's probably not.

gray_morgan15d ago

Right, but @angelarivera's prof has a point. We get so used to seeing the same things every day that our brains just filter them out. It's not about making a normal pot into a magic artifact, it's about actually seeing it for what it is. The real skill is learning to look at the familiar stuff like you've never seen it before. That's when you notice the weird crack pattern or the odd glaze color that tells the actual story.