There are software programs that can do area measurements on several items. Irv Rovner used IPTK as an add-on to Photoshop to measure stone tools and such. However, the utility of such measurements is open to question as Geoff indicates.

Lyle Browning, RPA


On Apr 28, 2011, at 5:15 PM, geoff carver wrote:

> I had meant to get back on this, but never had time. Overall I've never been
> convinced by any method used to quantify "bits" of much of anything: NISPs
> and so on in faunal or counting bits of pottery, and getting increasingly
> skeptical as time goes on. I think what I mostly take issue with is context:
> if I know how many pieces of pottery it doesn't tell me why there is more of
> one type than another: it could be that one type was more fragile and easily
> broken, or that one was primary and the other was secondary deposition, etc.
> Some have tried to estimate the size of pots from broken sherds and somehow
> estimate what percentage was represented, etc., but I think the only real
> solution is somehow to compare volume of the pottery itself (so many cubic
> cm of redware, so many cubic cm of blackware, etc.) and then compare these
> to the volume of the context/layer/stratum from which they derive. As far as
> I can see, that's the only way to make comparison, but then: how do you go
> about measuring the volume of sherds? Maybe if we got laser scanning to be
> cheap enough that we could do a quick 3D model of each sherd as it was being
> processed...?
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> 
> 
> Really....no responses....how strange....
> 
> Conrad