Archaeologists sometimes use drilled repair holes in pottery fragments to estimate how strongly households preferred mending possessions to replacing them. In deposits from an eighteenth-century port, such holes became rarer after inexpensive factory-made dishes appeared, seemingly indicating that residents had become less thrifty. Priya Nanduri and colleagues note, however, that the newer ceramics generally shattered into smaller, less repairable pieces than hand-thrown wares did. The researchers also found that payments to traveling dish menders declined among households that continued purchasing hand-thrown wares, evidence that material differences may not fully explain the trend. But because the accounts do not identify which vessels broke or why they went unmended, Nanduri treats the records as suggestive rather than conclusive.
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