Investigating Craft Specialization and Pottery Standardization Using Geometric Morphometry of Vessel Shapes from Iron Age Northeast Taiwan

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Changes in craft production over time can indicate shifts in past social structures. However, traditional typological and linear measurements of vessels are limited because they can be insensitive to subtle variations resulting from changes in craft specialization. To overcome this limitation, we measured craft specialization using standardization of pottery shapes to identify changes in pottery production. Using the R programming language, we applied reproducible geometric morphometric methods to study pottery shapes from Kiwulan, a large multi-component Iron Age site in northeast Taiwan, to investigate changes resulting from foreign contact with European and Chinese groups. We found significant differences in shape and shape standardization that indicate changes in pottery production resulting from foreign contact. We interpret this as increasing craft specialization and changes in social organization. Our case study, which includes an openly available research compendium of R code suitable for use with any other assemblage, will help to expand the use of shape-based quantitative methods to questions about craft specialization and standardization in prehistoric ceramic technologies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24552