Overlapping Traces: Categorizing Ceramic Use-Wear across Functions

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Practitioners of ceramic use-wear analysis often document qualitative patterns to distinguish between past behaviors as well as taphonomic processes. If comparisons can be operationalized in a quantitative framework, analyzing assemblages across sites at a regional scale could inform our understanding of normative patterns of use as well as the diversity of use practices. Previous quantitative work has mostly compared alterations at the level of entire vessels or at the level of individual locations within vessels. This has set the stage for more holistic analyses that attempt to recognize diverse patterns statistically. I use a statistical dimension-reduction method to identify different patterns of use-wear traces among a collection of "miniature" cookpots at two Classical period sites in Greece, Athens and Olynthos, as part of a larger project to document diversity in the use of cook pots in domestic settings. By modeling vessels as a combination of overlapping patterns of use it is possible to distinguish several distinct modes of vessel alteration. Comparisons between contexts at each site support the multifunctionality of "miniature" cookpots.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25504