Sukhanov E.V. «Single-Potter’s» Vessel Shapes: from Ethnographic and Experimental Data to Archaeological Practice
Evgeny V. Sukhanov, Candidate of Sciences (History), Researcher, Department of Theory and Methods, Institute of Archaeology Russian Academy of Sciences, Dm. Ulyanova St, 19, 117292 Moscow, Russian Federation
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Abstract. Typology and classification remain the traditional archaeological methods for the morphological study of ancient ceramic vessel shapes. Their effectiveness, however, depends entirely on the completeness of the archaeological context. Different vessel types cannot “explain themselves”: independent data on the cultural, social, or chronological specifics of the sites where they were found are required to interpret them. When such contextual information is missing or incomplete, any formal systematics of vessel shapes become difficult to justify in terms of the cultural-historical content they are meant to reflect. The article proposes a new research methodology designed to overcome these limitations. It aims to identify in archaeological assemblages clay vessels that are identical in their shaping skills – the so-called products of “a single potter.” The reference corpus comprises wheelthrown shapes made by professional, high-skilled potters in the 1970s–1980s and handmade vessels crafted by non-professional craftspeople according to their personal “morphological standards.” Central to the approach are the results of pairwise comparisons of vessel shapes within each potter’s series and between pots made by different individuals. This has made it possible to establish reliable quantitative criteria for pairwise similarity of vessel shapes, sufficient to robustly identify the vessels of “a single potter” in archaeological contexts. Testing the method on assemblages with reasonably complete historical and archaeological contexts demonstrated its ability to detect both chronological phases and cultural particularities of ceramic complexes from archaeological sites.
Key words: ceramics, vessel shapes, ethnography and experimental approaches in pottery studies, pairwise comparison methodology, “single-potter’s” vessel.
Citation. Sukhanov E.V., 2026. Formy sosudov «odnogo mastera»: ot etnografii i eksperimenta k arheologii [“Single-Potter’s” Vessel Shapes: From Ethnographic and Experimental Data to Archaeological Practice]. Nizhnevolzhskiy Arkheologicheskiy Vestnik [The Lower Volga Archaeological Bulletin], vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 50-87. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/nav.jvolsu.2026.2.3
“Single-Potter’s” Vessel Shapes: From Ethnographic and Experimental Data to Archaeological Practice by Sukhanov E.V. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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