"A Bewildering Variety" : A Material Culture Approach to Pearlware Hollow Forms

Summary

DAACS facilitates ceramic analysis at the sherd level with highly developed, exacting protocols for cataloguing attributes such as stylistic elements. This paper seeks to increase the level of systematic rigor applied to the vessel form field.  The authors argue that only through a material culture approach – one that employs multiple available lines of evidence including museum collections, archaeological data, and documentary sources – can vessel form data be made more reliable and replicable from sherd to sherd.  The purpose of this paper is twofold.  First, utilizing a robust sample of whole objects, we will provide archaeometric data for better determining the forms of pearlware hollowwares; second, through the application of formulas to determine capacity, we will show why correct identification of ceramic forms at the sherd level is crucial to the broader anthropological themes of consumerism and fashion.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2015   •
• A Progress Report on the DAACS Research Consortium

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 354