Ancient pottery shards as a mirror into our ancestors' lives, says archaeologist Vanda Haferberga
University of Latvia researcher Vanda Haferberga explains how even a tiny fragment of ancient pottery can reveal a great deal about how our ancestors lived.
Vanda Haferberga, a researcher at the University of Latvia's Faculty of Humanities, Department of History and Archaeology, has spoken about the value of ancient ceramic fragments in archaeological research. According to her, pottery shards can be compared to a mirror reflecting the lives of our ancestors.
A small object, a wealth of information
Haferberga points out that even a very small piece of a ceramic shard can provide a surprising amount of information about people who lived in ancient times. Such finds allow archaeologists to draw conclusions about how ancestors lived and organized their daily existence.
What shards can reveal
According to the researcher, pottery fragments can show what ancestors ate, as well as how far they traveled to obtain the clay used to make their vessels. This means that even a seemingly insignificant, broken object can become a valuable source of information, helping to reconstruct the daily life, resource-gathering, and mobility of people from the distant past.
Haferberga represents the University of Latvia's Faculty of Humanities, where she studies ancient history, including through the analysis of material culture such as ceramics. Her perspective illustrates how seemingly simple archaeological finds can serve as an important tool for understanding ancient societies.
