I was brushing off pottery shards at a dig in Santa Fe for years. A visiting professor from U of Michigan saw me and said 'you're scrubbing the context away'. Totally changed how I handle surface finds.

3 comments

3 Comments

Ever wonder how many other fields have a version of "scrubbing the context away"? I bet there's some poor soul in a library somewhere wiping dust off a book and accidentally erasing a marginal note from some famous author. That professor gave you the kind of simple, obvious-in-hindsight advice that changes everything.

lily973mo ago

Right? That's the kind of advice that sticks with you forever. @ericschmidt's library example is perfect, it happens everywhere. I saw a museum intern once cleaning an old painting frame and they were about to wipe off what turned out to be the artist's signature. It makes you realize how much we can miss by just trying to make things look neat. That professor basically taught you to see the story, not just the dirt.

aaron6771mo ago

Exactly what I was thinking. @ericschmidt your library example really hit home for me because I had a similar thing happen at an old bookshop. I was helping sort through a donation box and almost tossed out a paperback with a weird stain on the cover. Turned out the "stain" was a signed inscription from the author, a local poet nobody remembered anymore. That professor's advice about not scrubbing away the story applies to so much more than just old books or paintings. We're all so quick to clean things up that we forget the mess is sometimes the most interesting part. It's like that old saying about how the scratches on a table tell you it's been lived on.