Today we finished the last of the excavation levels we wanted to complete analyzing this summer. I have to admit that there was not a lot of exciting sherds in the last three boxes. After finishing these, we moved on to looking at the inventoried items from the levels we have been analyzing. If, while the team was excavating, they came across a complete or nearly complete vessel, or a particularly distinctive artifact – they would set it aside and have it processed for inclusion in the registered finds which are kept in a separate place in the apotheke. So we looked through the database and pulled out the registered finds from the levels whose context pottery we have already examined. One of the registered pieces was a plate base that had half of a cross on it. Since it was a very distinctive cross, I remembered seeing another sherd that was very similar to it in the context pottery. When I compared the two pieces, I realized that they fitted together and formed a join. Since they came from different levels in the excavation, and actually from different years of excavating, it helps tie some of our excavation levels together chronologically. It was a stroke of luck – sometimes it is better to be lucky than good.
RSM
Ancient History Ramblings 
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