This lab will build upon our previous discussions of description, classification, and comparison of ceramic artifacts; the goal today will be to think more critically about the decisions we make as scholars during the process of our investigation.

Activities

You will be given some time in beginning of the lab to finish the observations and comparisons you have been recording about “your” individual ceramic fragment. Continue to look for parallels or similar objects in catalogues and amongst the sherds being studied by your classmates.

The second half of the lab will highlight a different approach to ceramic analysis: the assemblage. You have just experienced how to describe one object, primarily relying on your personal observations relating to aspects of form and decoration. Now you will experience how to compare a group of objects. Working together, your task is to devise a typology (a division, sorting, or classification of “types”) using a collection of sherds we have from the site of Antioch. To do this, you will need to discuss the attributes and characteristics of the sherds in the assemblage, their similarities and differences, and to make decisions about how individual examples and groups relate. The goal here is to think about what information and levels of detail matter and why, so be prepared to defend your decisions and method!

As part of our final discussion, we will talk about the variables that ceramicists commonly record in their reports and how (effectively) such data contributes to answering the broader archaeological questions in which we are interested.