Rant: A dig supervisor told me to brush away 'modern trash' that turned out to be a 17th century pipe stem

Last Saturday I was working a test pit in Portsmouth, small site behind an old tavern foundation. I found this little clay pipe stem fragment, maybe 2 inches, and I got excited because the bore hole looked tiny which usually means old. I called over the supervisor and she goes 'oh that's just junk from the 1800s, toss it in the discard bucket.' I held onto it anyway, checked it later with a bore gauge. It matched 1680-1720 range. She never even looked at the bowl or any maker's mark, just judged it on color. I get that surface finds can be mixed, but if we throw out everything that isn't obviously prehistoric, we're losing the whole colonial period narrative. Has anyone else had a site director brush off artifacts that turned out to be significant? How do you push back without getting benched from the field team?

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fionanguyen17d ago

That bore hole trick is solid and you did exactly right. Supervisors get lazy about anything that isnt a projectile point, but colonial artifacts carry the whole story of the site. Keeping it and checking later was smart, no one can argue with the gauge. If they bench you for that, the team is losing a careful eye anyway. Next time just ask her to show you the diagnostic features she used to date it, usually shuts that down fast.