Thanks. Some great info at that page. We were discussing the “wishing well” idea recently. This page says “The fact that this vessel has survived in its entirety suggests that it may have been deliberately placed in the waterhole, perhaps as a closing deposit for the well. Exactly why people in the Iron Age often used pots as offerings in this way is something of a mystery.”
A “closing deposit” is a new idea (at least to me) that nobody pitched in the recent discussion.
It’s interesting that the best place to find whole pots is in graves. Every day pottery ended up broken and discarded. Makes a lot of sense.
I once saw a special exhibition at the GR Ford Museum of the various presidential china place settings. Quite a number are not known to have survived. The Lincolns' has only one setting that had survived. Ceramic utensils break, even if they last years or decades or more, and it is indeed rare to find intact ancient ceramic items. The Romans used a lot of ready-to-go architectural elements that were tile, such as the floor shims for the hypercausts, flooring, roofing, and the hollow vertical elements used for the walls of the calderiums in the baths of posh private homes. Those didn't experience as much wear and tear in use, and probably a lot of that wound up being a puzzling addition to later construction by other cultural groups.