Using Extant Photographs of Ceramic Collections for Geometric Morphometric Archaeological Research

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Emerging Voices in Mogollon Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Modern archaeology is constantly seeking innovative, nondestructive ways to learn new things about the past from existing collections. One powerful tool in the modern arsenal is Geometric Morphometrics (GMM), a method of quantitative shape analysis that can be applied to study technological style and communities of practice through material culture. 2D GMM requires only photographs, which museums already use to document their collections. If precise enough photographs of archaeological materials exist, then many new avenues of GMM analysis may be possible on collections that are difficult to access, or even that have already been repatriated. This paper compares the analytical effectiveness of profile photos of ceramic Roosevelt Red Ware vessels from thirteenth and fourteenth century Eastern Arizona that were taken previously, as part of museum documentation, to photos of the same vessels collected with the specific requirements of GMM in mind. This tests the ability to use preexisting photographs for Geometric Morphometrics research, offers insights for museum documentation practices, and investigates what information archaeologists are capable of learning from GMM on photos of ceramic vessels from the coalescent communities of the 1200s and 1300s Southwest.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Emerging Voices in Mogollon Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38725.0