Archeological Mistakes I’ve Made #8: The handle was lying on the ground at a public historic site, weathered, ceramic, just laying on the ground at the foot of a tree. I picked it up the way I often do with found things: as a beachcomber, not a trespasser. At the time, it didn’t feel like taking. But as the years passed, I found myself returning to the object with a different lens, one shaped by questions of context, cultural residue, and the ethics of collecting. This work re-stages that moment of encounter. Viewers are invited to hold the handle, to feel its weight as a material fragment and as a shifting ethical object. Not stolen, but maybe kept too quickly.