3D Scanning Technology as a Standard Archaeological Tool for Pottery Analysis: Practice and Theory

This article reports on the successful completion of a large-scale pilot project, where 3D scanning technology, and newly developed software to optimally identify the rotation axis of wheel produced ceramics, were used as a practical tool for pottery analysis. Approximately 1000 potsherds from several sites and periods were scanned, their symmetry axis computed, and their mean profiles drawn. The variety of fragments shapes, sizes and surface properties enabled us to test the system for a large range of archaeologically relevant pottery types. The high rate of success of the system, its efficiency and its output in the form of accurate, print quality profiles, encourage us to recommend this method as a practical and reliable tool in Archaeological research

Standardized Vessels and number of Potters : looking for individual production

International audienc

Computerized morphological classification of ceramics

A novel morphological analysis of ceramic assemblages is presented using objective, automatic and computerized method for clustering and classification. The analysis is based on the entire shape of the potsherds, as expressed by three mathematical representations of their profiles. The similarity between profiles is mathematically defined in terms of the above mentioned representations. Cluster Analysis and Discriminant Analysis are used to reveal a hierarchical classification of pottery assemblages. The method is illustrated here by a detailed analysis of an assemblage which was classified previously by a pottery expert. A quantitative comparison of the two typologies reveals the power and archaeological sense of the new method

Computerized Ceramic Typology

This article describes how to expedite the time-consuming process of cataloging shards of pottery found at archaeological excavations. The authors devised a method to scan and then separate the potsherds by size and shape. Analyzing relics from the ancient city of Dor in this way found a provable evolution in the construction and design of pottery. Bowls were analyzed from several periods of the Iron Age and the curvature measurements, along with the tangent angle and carination points were mapped

Panel on Imaging Technology

Chair and commentary: Norbert Zimmermann Roman Lamps from Ossaia, La Tufa: Cultural artifacts to 3D replicas; TanyaHenderson, University of Alberta Computerized Documentation and Analysis of Archaeological Artifacts; Avshalom Karasik, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israe

Quantitative measures of the uniformity of ceramics

Abstract: The introduction of computerized recording and measurement of archaeological ceramic vessels opens new channels of research, some of which we introduce and discuss in the present contribution. In particular, we show that the accurate measurements of wheel produced pottery provide information on the deviations from the ideal cylindrical symmetry which are due to faults in various stages of the production process. We present a systematic method to quantify two kinds of deviations from perfect symmetry: the uniformity of the profiles of cross-sections and the deformations of horizontal sections. We propose that they may be considered as indicators of the technological skill of the producers, in a way which was not possible hitherto in archaeological research

Optimal choice of prototypes for ceramic typology

A crucial step in any typological analysis is the determination of the prototypes according to which the assemblage is to be classified. Two conflicting requirements dictate this choice: the number of prototypes should be minimal to allow an efficient classification. At the same time, the set of prototypes should be comprehensive so that the essential variability of the original assemblage is reproduced by the prototypes. This problem is especially complex when the assemblage consists of ceramic vessels of the same genre such as e.g., storage jars, cooking pots or drinking cups. Here, we would like to present a computerized method to identify an optimal set of prototypes, which is based on the analysis of pottery profiles in terms of their curvature functions. The profiles are clustered according to their correlations (defined as the scalar products of the curvature functions). Averaging the curvature functions in each of the dominant branches yield a set of curvature functions, whose number is much smaller than the number of profiles in the original assemblage, and which is based on the dominant but distinct features in each of the branches. The next step in the process is to find the optimal subset of types, which satisfies the conflicting requirements mentioned above. In the present mathematical setting, one can define two "figures of merit" which quantify the two requirements. The optimal set of prototypes is the one which minimizes the number of types without affecting the quality of the description. The method will be illustrated by showing its application to an assemblage of a few hundreds of Early Bronze cooking pots and jars from Tel Arad (Southern Israel) and the Sinai peninsula (Egypt)