Originally Posted by Prwlr
Originally Posted by westside_benny
Here are a couple that I have collected from the lake shores...depends on the ice as to what is unearthed. Always amazed that even a scrap survives hundreds of years, more aptly hundreds of freeze-thaw cycles. Holds up better than our roads! Would love to find a larger piece but not likely when it comes to pottery shards in the upper midwest.

Love looking at these and pondering the patterns etched on them..pieces of string and fingernails from long before my time.

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Benny break a piece or two and see what the unweathered inside looks like. If it looks a rock then these pieces are weathered rocks. Pottery will have a different color and tiny bits and pieces of other materials such ground pottery or sand in the matrix (called temper). Post some pics of the fresh edge here on the fire.



I don't need to break anything in half. Those are most definitely pottery. I find most after the lake recedes during a winter where the ice really chews up the shore. Plenty of them are already broken revealing the clay/substrate mixture they are made of. My photography skills are not the best, if they were you would see markings on them of patterns made by string, fingernails and tool marks. Definitely NOT a box of old rocks, ROFLMAO...

Liberalism; The impossible yet accepted notion that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.