Pottery Sherds (often called pottery shards by players) come from archaeology in Minecraft. You obtain them by brushing Suspicious Sand or Suspicious Gravel at five structure types: Desert Wells, Desert Temples, Warm Ocean Ruins, Cold Ocean Ruins and Trail Ruins. Sherds cannot be crafted. Four sherds make one Decorated Pot, with one pictured design on each side; Brick items can fill missing recipe slots but produce blank sides.
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Handle suspicious blocks carefully: breaking one before brushing can destroy the buried item. A completed Decorated Pot can be broken to recover its sherds, but the tool and method you use determine whether you get the ingredients back or an intact pot.
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What a Pottery Sherd is
Pottery Sherd is the official item name in both Minecraft Java Edition and Bedrock Edition. “Pottery shard” is a common informal name, but the inventory item is labeled Pottery Sherd. A sherd is a decorative archaeology reward rather than a tool, fuel or building block.
Each sherd carries part of a painted pattern. Four sherds can be assembled into a Decorated Pot, and each recipe position controls one visible side of the finished pot. The result is a way to display discoveries from archaeology in a base, museum, trading hall or map build.
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Sherds are not craftable. You must locate an archaeology site and brush the correct suspicious block to obtain them.
All five places where pottery sherds are found
The final Trails & Tales archaeology content distributes 20 sherds across five site categories. The structure determines whether you should search suspicious sand or suspicious gravel.
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| Archaeology site | Suspicious block | Typical setting | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Desert Well | Suspicious Sand | Desert | Brush suspicious sand around the well. |
| Desert Temple | Suspicious Sand | Desert | Search the temple structure and brush its suspicious sand. |
| Warm Ocean Ruin | Suspicious Sand | Warm ocean waters | Brush suspicious sand in and around the ruin, usually underwater. |
| Cold Ocean Ruin | Suspicious Gravel | Cold ocean waters | Brush suspicious gravel in and around the ruin. |
| Trail Ruin | Suspicious Gravel | Taigas, Snowy Taigas, Old Growth forests and Jungles | Excavate the buried ruin and brush its suspicious gravel. |
The block type is the fastest way to avoid a wasted search. Desert and warm-ocean archaeology uses suspicious sand; cold-ocean ruins and Trail Ruins use suspicious gravel. Ordinary sand and gravel do not contain archaeology loot.
Desert Wells
Desert Wells are small water structures that can generate in desert biomes. Suspicious sand may be mixed with ordinary blocks around the well. Because the well is exposed, it is often a convenient first archaeology target, but the fragile block can be damaged by careless mining, falling blocks or other block updates.
Desert Temples
Desert Temples are larger desert structures. Search the temple rather than assuming every sand block is suspicious. Brush suspicious sand in the structure to uncover buried items, including sherds. Avoid detonating the temple’s central trap while excavating: explosions can destroy both suspicious blocks and recovered loot.
Warm Ocean Ruins
Warm Ocean Ruins generate underwater and contain suspicious sand. Bring a way to manage breathing, such as water-breathing equipment, doors where appropriate, or repeated trips to the surface. Clear surrounding blocks without breaking the suspicious sand, then brush each target in place.
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Cold Ocean Ruins
Cold Ocean Ruins use suspicious gravel instead of suspicious sand. They are also underwater, so visibility, oxygen and hostile aquatic mobs can make excavation more difficult. Mark brushed locations so you do not repeatedly search the same ruin.
Trail Ruins
Trail Ruins are mostly buried structures associated with a lost culture. Mojang lists their generation in Taigas, Snowy Taigas, all Old Growth forest biomes and Jungles. You may need to remove ordinary dirt, gravel or other covering blocks to expose the structure, but do not break a suspicious gravel block while clearing it.
Trail Ruins can provide more than pottery. Brushing their suspicious gravel may also reveal the Wayfinder, Raiser, Shaper and Host armor-trim templates, as well as the Relic music disc. Those rewards are separate from sherds, so a Trail Ruin can be worthwhile even after you have collected a particular pottery design.
How to get pottery sherds safely
Use this sequence at every site. The key rule is to brush suspicious blocks instead of mining them.
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- Craft or obtain a Brush. Archaeology requires the craftable Brush item. Put it on your hotbar before excavating.
- Locate one of the five structures. Identify a Desert Well, Desert Temple, Warm Ocean Ruin, Cold Ocean Ruin or Trail Ruin.
- Identify the fragile block. Look for suspicious sand at the two desert sites and Warm Ocean Ruins. Look for suspicious gravel at Cold Ocean Ruins and Trail Ruins. Suspicious blocks have a distinct textured appearance compared with ordinary sand or gravel.
- Protect the area. Light dark spaces, block flowing water where practical, and remove nearby hazards without touching the suspicious block. At a desert temple, disable the pressure-plate trap before working near the chamber.
- Use the Brush on the suspicious block. Hold the Brush and use it on the block. Keep brushing until the buried object emerges. The block is consumed during the archaeology process, so do not expect it to remain as a normal sand or gravel block.
- Collect the dropped item. The recovered object appears as an item you can pick up. A site can yield different archaeology rewards, so not every brush action produces a Pottery Sherd.
- Record your finds. Store sherds in a chest or shulker box and note which designs you have. This prevents you from losing rare patterns while exploring several sites.
Breaking suspicious sand or suspicious gravel directly can destroy the buried object before it is recovered. Treat every suspicious block as a one-time excavation target: do not use a shovel, piston, explosion or accidental block update on it.
How many pottery sherds exist?
The final Java and Bedrock Trails & Tales content contains 20 Pottery Sherds distributed among the five archaeology sites. That total comes from the final release notes, not from the earliest development snapshots.
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Mojang’s archaeology announcement was published on 10 February 2023 and updated on 22 March 2023. During development, the experimental feature set described suspicious gravel, Trail Ruins and 16 new pottery shards. Later final-release notes established 20 sherds in total. Consequently, an old snapshot guide may list 16; that number describes an earlier stage and is not the final collection count.
The 20 designs are spread across the five site categories rather than being obtained from crafting or a single guaranteed chest. Finding every design therefore requires visiting multiple archaeology structures and brushing their suspicious blocks.
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Sherds are decorative ingredients for the Decorated Pot recipe. Place four ingredients in the recipe’s four side positions. Each Pottery Sherd contributes its own pictured side to the resulting pot.
| Recipe ingredient | Visible result on that side |
|---|---|
| Pottery Sherd | The pattern printed on that sherd. |
| Brick | A blank side with no picture. |
Bricks are substitutes, not additional designs. If you have fewer than four sherds, fill the remaining recipe slots with Brick items to make a pot with a mixture of pictured and blank sides. Four bricks make a completely blank Decorated Pot. The recipe gives you flexibility while collecting, but it cannot turn a brick side into a sherd pattern later.
Planning the four sides
Before crafting, arrange the four sherds deliberately. The recipe positions correspond to the four sides, so rotating the pot changes which design faces the direction you care about. If the pot is for a display wall, decide which pattern should face the entrance and place that sherd in the corresponding recipe slot.
Decorated Pots are primarily decorative. They let you display archaeology patterns in builds and combine naturally with shelves, pathways, ruins, museums and themed interiors. The sherd itself has no separate combat, farming or redstone function.
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Can you get sherds back from a Decorated Pot?
Yes, but use a normal block-breaking method. Break the Decorated Pot with a tool or method that breaks blocks, and it returns the sherds and other ingredients used to make it. This lets you rearrange a display or reclaim patterns for another pot.
The drop changes when you use the wrong interaction:
- Block-breaking tool: the decorated pot breaks and returns its component sherds or bricks.
- Bare hands: the pot drops as an intact Decorated Pot instead of giving back the ingredients.
- Silk Touch tool: the pot drops intact rather than yielding its component ingredients.
- Another item that does not perform the normal block-breaking interaction: the intact pot is dropped.
If your goal is to move a finished display, an intact-pot drop is useful. If your goal is to recover a specific sherd, select the appropriate block-breaking tool first. Test the interaction on a disposable pot if you are uncertain about a custom tool or modded item.
Java Edition and Bedrock Edition
The core pottery rules are the same in Java and Bedrock: five archaeology site categories, suspicious sand or gravel depending on the structure, a final total of 20 sherds, the four-ingredient Decorated Pot recipe and the different recovery behavior when a pot is broken.
| Feature | Java Edition | Bedrock Edition |
|---|---|---|
| Desert sites use suspicious sand | Yes | Yes |
| Cold Ocean Ruins and Trail Ruins use suspicious gravel | Yes | Yes |
| Five archaeology site categories | Yes | Yes |
| Final sherd collection | 20 total | 20 total |
| Four ingredients craft a Decorated Pot | Yes | Yes |
| Brick substitution creates blank sides | Yes | Yes |
| Breaking method affects drops | Yes | Yes |
Exact world-generation locations still vary by seed, version and difficulty settings, so a Java or Bedrock player should use the structure and biome clues rather than expecting a fixed coordinate.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them
Mining the suspicious block
The most serious mistake is treating suspicious sand or gravel like ordinary terrain. Breaking it can destroy the buried reward. Switch to the Brush before touching the block.
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Searching the wrong block type
Suspicious sand belongs to Desert Wells, Desert Temples and Warm Ocean Ruins. Suspicious gravel belongs to Cold Ocean Ruins and Trail Ruins. If you are at a cold ruin and only inspect sand, you are looking for the wrong material.
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Archaeology sites contain several possible rewards. A successful brushing action can reveal something other than a Pottery Sherd, so continue excavating the site instead of leaving after the first non-sherd item.
Using an old guide’s total
Guides written during experimental development may say there are 16 pottery shards. The final collection count is 20, so check whether a guide is describing an early snapshot before using it as a completion checklist.
Breaking a display pot with the wrong item
If you want the sherds back, do not punch the pot with bare hands or use Silk Touch. Those interactions give you an intact pot, not the individual recipe ingredients.
A practical archaeology checklist
- Carry a Brush and spare inventory space.
- Bring lighting and building blocks for stabilizing the excavation.
- Prepare for water-breathing and visibility problems at ocean ruins.
- At Desert Temples, neutralize the trap before excavating.
- Brush suspicious blocks in place instead of mining them.
- Track the 20 final sherd designs across multiple sites.
- Use Bricks only when you accept a blank side on the finished pot.
- Use a normal block-breaking tool when reclaiming sherds from a Decorated Pot.
With those precautions, archaeology becomes a controlled excavation rather than a race to mine every unusual block. Find the correct structure, match it to the correct suspicious block, brush patiently and reserve the recovered sherds for the four-sided design you want to display.
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