Micro-CT Scanning with 3D Image Analysis of Pore Systems in Sherds as a Tool to Understand Performance Characteristics of Archaeological Ceramics

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Characterizing a ceramic pore system reveals information about use properties and functionality. Pores making up the system include some that are isolated and others with connections to other pores, some connected to the ceramic surface and others interior-only, and variation exists in pore size and shape and connection size and directness. The structure of this pore system impacts functional aspects of the ceramic such as permeability, liquid diffusion, thermal conductivity, and mechanical strength. Desktop high-resolution micro-CT systems generate images from sherd samples nondestructively with spatial resolution sufficient to measure many pore variables. Using the 3D image analysis software program Dragonfly, segmentation of pores from particles and matrix is improved with models from machine learning and deep learning with convolutional neural networks. A multi-stage image analysis protocol can then examine variables related to ceramic function such as total volume porosity, percentage of pores accessible to the surface versus isolated interior ones, statistical properties of pores related to size and shape, percentage of unconnected pores, average number of connections between pores, and the length, diameter, and directness of those connections; a porous microstructure analysis can also study the permeability and thermal conductivity of the ceramic system as a whole.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35587.0