About

Archaeologists find many objects at the sites where they excavate. The most common finds are different types of pottery. However, pots, jars, plates and other ordinary types of pottery are often found broken into many pieces. The pieces of broken pottery are called sherds. Sherds are important for many reasons. The decoration, type of clay and method of manufacture can tell us about the type of object the sherd came from and the culture which produced it. You are a young archaeologist working at a site which was once an Indus Valley city. Every day you are given boxes of pot sherds to sort through. Look through your pile of sherds and try to match them with known pottery types by reading the clues and looking at the profiles of the pots and sherds.