Sorting through Time: R-Driven Categorical Analysis of Ceramic Sherds from Late Prehispanic Amazonas, Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Intensive analyses like chaîne opératoire studies are not always feasible during preliminary ceramic assessments within larger archaeological projects. In our excavation of the late prehispanic site Wimba, in the Mendoza region of Amazonas Province, Peru, we collected a wide range of quantitative and categorical measurements from ceramic sherds, storing this data in a relational database for future analysis. This poster presents our innovative approach to sorting these sherds using R, a statistical programming language, to conduct a chaîne opératoire-based analysis. Comprehensive ceramic studies in the Chachapoyas region and its contemporary time period are relatively scarce, with existing classifications primarily based on decoration types. Our method aims to expand this approach by considering multiple attributes of ceramic production. We compare our findings to existing ceramic studies from Chachapoyas and adjacent regions, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of local pottery traditions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53723