Whatever method you use has problems as people selectively move finds eg 
picking up bigger pieces which often tend to be rims or bases. I always 
prefer to use at least 2 methods but one also has to intuitively think 
about the biases- does your 100 sherds of a certain ware a come from a 
single vessel. I always like the case of the 10th century site of 
Colardelle in France occupied for 40 years on the edge of  a lake 
perhaps a single family. It produced 50 silver coins, hundreds of 
knives, pots etc and some very nice weaponry and musical instruments. 
They excavated a nearby earthern castle to try and see if the family 
might have moved there- and  found a handful of sherds of pottery. 
However, all this tells us about the differing depositional histories of 
the two sites. Another classic case is the London waterfront where they 
used midden deposits to infill behind the medieval wharfs. i remmeber 
when i first met my late friend Geoff Egan at a seminar he gave - I 
asked him how many of a certain sort of medieval object they had found 
on the waterfront and he answered hundreds and then how many from the 
rest of London after half a  century of modern excavation and he 
answered one possible example.

paul


  On 29/04/2011 16:17, Susan Walter wrote:
> Rather than counting, we do a total weight of our materials - ceramic, 
> or glass, or whatever, and then do estimated minimum vessel/item counts.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "paul courtney" 
> <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Friday, April 29, 2011 4:27 AM
> Subject: Counting bits
>
>
>> Hi all
>>
>> I spend much of my life counting bits of pottery (sherd nos, wt, minimum
>> vessels and EVEs depending on site and money) etc but don't pretend
>> interpreting such figures is an exact science - its often very
>> intuitive. After decades of experience you tend to be aware that certain
>> pottery breaks into smaller or larger pieces and note that something
>> different is going on when it is say over small. However, it is useful
>> to know you have 20,00 thousand sherds of North Devon gravel tempered
>> sherds as opposed to 2.  As i pointed out to a client and noticed that
>> the two sherds of 13th-14th century AD pot in their 8th century Radio-
>> carbon dated pit were 1g (and a notional one probably) and small enough
>> to go down a worm hole they needn't have panicked. What we excavate
>> anyone usually has little resemblance to what was used as examining
>> exceptional sites shows those that are waterlogged, calacareous, or just
>> have their middens in place or in the UK looking at the very different
>> material metal detectorists find to what we seen on sites. Various
>> people have worked on pot/ bone comparisons eg the late Alan Vince in UK
>> but mostly there is no time for such stuff in commercial archaeology.
>>
>> paul
>
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