I used to deal in the pot shard interpretation business back in the day. Although my projections were based on the entry and exit trajectories of the chunk of ceramic in question and a working knowledge of the available material, it was a specialist who had the last word on whether my 'hawkeye' take on bowl radius hit the wicket or missed the off stump.

Some of his 'try again' suggestions required such bizarre geometric contortions that one was forced to conclude the specialist had access to a time machine or was making the dirty old lump of clay fit his speculative PhD dissertation rather than any extant pots. It left me with a suspicion of backstory or futurology based on limited sources, as well as a jaded view of vested interests that latched onto them.