TESTING A METHOD OF NEOLITHIC CERAMIC ANALYSIS
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 08/12/2020

A priority goal for archaeologists should be to refine the methodology of selection and analysis of materials, trying to follow an objective, logical, reproducible and affordable procedure; In short, using a scientific method in the study of Heritage. Over the years, handcrafted Neolithic pottery has been studied in many different ways, trying to solve the complexity of a non-standardized material product as opposed to other subsequent productions. We, at the Universitat de València (Spain), propose a global vision for selection and analysis of this type of material culture, where the three main characteristics of a ceramic vessel are included: typology, decoration and technology. All these data are collected in a customized database where Archaeological Heritage useful information is stored. We believe this approach is bringing multiple advantages, such as: it can be used in any other equipment for the study of other sets of handcrafted pottery, allowing comparison among studies, also quantitative aspects can be treated mathematically, and each different ceramic productions are better characterized which allows a full address to the operational chain, diachronic studies and information transmission, to name a few. In this conference, objectivity of our method is tested by comparing two double-blind researches conducted by a pick of researchers from the same team. In addition to the archaeological information provided by the study as such, our working method has been further improved, in such a way it is homogeneous, standardized and reproducible.


Author(s): Escribá Ruiz, Mª Pilar - Molina, Lluís - Bernabeu Aubán, Joan - Jiménez-Puerto, Joaquín (Universitat de València)