Pottery Shards

I love pottery shards and keep every one I find, maybe someday I will build a pot back together. What State did you say you found them in? They tell a story about the people there even more than the stone artifacts, at least to me ;-)
 

he is in Utah I recollect....
 

I've collected a lot of pottery shards in my day too. Always nice to find one with paint- something we don't get much of out here other than reddish ocher (we get patterns). HH! Yakker
 

I really don't pick them up anymore unless they show patterns or are big pieces. I kept 2 today that were at least 3 inches long the rest I just left.
 

All that pottery gotta b a killer close by!!!
 

actually thinking there must be dug houses close by....you may have some significant here, including graves, pit houses etc. Pottery wasn't something desert dwellers carried around like canteens.
 

A older man said they actually left their pots in the woods around my area. When the creek floods it would wash them into the creeks and break into pieces. He said that is why there are so many pieces in the creeks. I guess the pots were hard to carry to the next site so they would just leave them.
 

rock said:
A older man said they actually left their pots in the woods around my area. When the creek floods it would wash them into the creeks and break into pieces. He said that is why there are so many pieces in the creeks. I guess the pots were hard to carry to the next site so they would just leave them.
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I have a theory that they left their pots around for whatever reason, maybe the climate changed or maybe they were displaced by another culture, and then after 1000 years or so of that pot sitting on the ground it got broken by animals or hail storms. We get some big hail storms here once sometimes. I was in one in Yellowstone that was huge. Had to run for cover. It was dangerous. Imagine how many big hail storms would come and gone in 1000 years. That would bust a pot to pieces.
 

I sorta think of them the same way when I find shards of glass bottles and crockery. Family groups and people live there until life changes move them to other areas or maybe death or marriage events. People leave trash and even non trash laying about and move on because they don't consider it important to keep anymore. Example being maybe like how I would foresee in my future. I've lived here for years and raised my family and when I cross over the things I consider important will probably not be important to my boys. If they stay in my home stuff might get tossed outside to rot away or just sit there until someone comes along and re-purposes it. So it's likely that very old things got left behind because it wasn't useful anymore in the way it used to be, or maybe it was buried in burial mounds or trash pits like the glass and metal used to be and now with all the time and erosion it's washing out broken up or maybe even whole. Likely too that modern families were taught disrespect for Native American items and tossed them around or used them for target practice and broke them into pieces. Just like a young friend of mine told me they used to throw the old bottles that were left behind in piles behind their home place just to hear them break and she winced when she told me and now regrets it, but they were kids and the parents didn't care. Seems I read a story about how the kids were given treats for picking up the "arrowheads" in the fields and gardens and tossing them out like they were rocks, which in those days there was no respect for any race but white so they didn't mean anything to them and were considered rocks. And that is sort of one of my theories about the shards.
 

A lot of times pots were broken after they got used a lot or became to old. Since some pots were made with bone ,shell and other organic items, they would make them sick if used to long.
 

Sometimes too.. At seasonal village sites... Pots were made on arrival and discarded when vacating the site .. and as necessary while there..often in "trash pits" or middens.... Season after season..for decades.
They didn't pack them out..just made more when they got back
 

Last edited:
GatorBoy said:
Sometimes too.. At seasonal village sites... Pots were made on arrival and discarded when vacating the site .. and as necessary while there..often in "trash pits" or middens.... Season after season..for decades.
They didn't pack them out..just made more when they got back
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Glad you are back with us. You have a lot of well needed knowledge.
 

Ahh heck.. I try to chip in when I can thanks rock.
Where I lay my head is home

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