ABSTRACT
I was walking along the beach the other day with my family and one of my children picked up a water-rolled fragment of a glass bottle; knowing I was an archaeologist, he ran to me and asked me how old it was. I took it from him, turned it around and examined it carefully; after a few moments I said ‘Oh, not that old, about a hundred years at the most’. I am not sure if he was impressed or not – either by my performance or its antiquity, but he kept the piece and later used it to decorate a sandcastle.
