Mending is one of my favorite things to do. We use a glue that will dissolve with acetone if need be and a sand box to support drying artifacts.The units around the Burch House have yielded a large number of mendable artifacts. Usually we can fit 2 or 3 sherds together, but lately we have been reassembling nearly complete vessels! The stoneware pan is one example. The finished product has only 2 little spaces for missing sherds.
This wine bottle was a bit more difficult, since the glass is thin in places, but it was worth it to see it go from a big pile of green glass, to a recognizable object. By mending artifacts we can measure the volume of vessels or have an object ready to display.
Once mended, can you tell how something may have broken based on a point of impact? Usually cracks radiating from a specific point may indicate a point where the vessel impacted the floor or another object...
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