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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;romismatist, post: 8229599, member: 44106&quot;]Great thread, and reminds me of all the &#039;sherds I have kicking around in the basement. I actually dug them out and photographed them. When I was a kid, I spent my summers in Southern Italy and often walked the ploughed fields looking for stuff. I found a ton of Greek and Roman &#039;sherds. You can see some terra sigillata, what looks like part of a decorated roof tile, some Roman oil lamp fragments, and some black Greek slip ware...</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1446609[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1446608[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>The Northern German &#039;sherds I found when I spent time there were primarily Neolithic and medieval, and were rougher, and sometimes fire-blackened:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1446610[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Potsherds were not always discarded - they sometimes had other uses. Smaller ones were worked around the edges to serve as gaming tokens, but larger ones were also worked into rough discs and used as amphora stoppers:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1446611[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Lastly, I&#039;m not sure these would qualify as &quot;potsherds&quot;, but they are interesting. I found a few chunks of marble with traces of lettering on them which likely come from inscriptions. The larger chunk is not marble but displays a a vine-leaf pattern, while the smaller one may have been reworked as a gaming piece. These were all isolated surface finds on ploughed soil, so may have been part of fill or other material. </p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp;[ATTACH=full]1446613[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The piece I wanted to find and post the most was one which I unfortunately was unable to locate yet. It&#039;s perhaps the most poignant artifact of its type, and is a &#039;sherd of black slip Greek ware with a very clear and full thumbprint on it. Even though it probably has no value artistically, it always used to remind me of the transience of human life... after 2500 years, that thumbprint is the only thing likely remaining of the potter who made it, but jarringly connects me to the ancient everyday humanity of that time.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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