On Thu, 5 Jun 1997 11:28:40 SAST-2 Antonia Malan wrote:
> (1) In 1994 there was desultry correspondence about standardising 19th
> century ceramic analysis. Did anything come of this? Did anyone
> crack the secret? We have sorted out the Dutch 18th century, and the
> British period up to 1840 or even 1860; now we are onto the later
> 19th and early 20th century. (Neither POTS nor Miller's Indices are
> directly relevant to the Cape, so we had to set up our own system.) We believ
e
> it is indeed necessary to deal with
> the later period and its problems. We are tackling MNVs, basic description an
d
> identification, a simple database (based on MSAccess). Are we too
> optimistic? Any ideas or support welcome.
> Dr Antonia Malan
Standardising minimum vessel counts present a considerable problem,
particularly for the period 1780-1820 when creamware and pearlware
co-exist, but also whenever there are going to be significant amounts
of decorated and undecorated wares in an assemblage (as will often
happen in the mid to late 19th century - well, at least it does outside of
South Africa ;-)
The problem is as follows: Assume that you count the vessels based on rim
sherd occurrence and unique body sherds. Usually, you will significantly
underestimate the number of undecorated wares (whether creamware or
ironstone/white granite) as decorated unique body sherds are far easier to
identify. Let's assume that you therefore cut out the unique body sherds and
base your count on rim sherds only. You will _still_ usually underestimate
the number of undecorated vessels as it is far easier to identify a vessel from
a
decorated rim (whether painted, shelledge, transfer-printed, etc.) than from a
collection of undecorated rims. This discrepancy will be particularly pronounce
d
on sites with highly fragmented assemblages, such as ploughed sites.
For example, at the Slave Quarter site at Thomas Jefferson's Poplar
Forest (a ploughed, exceptionally fragmented assemblage), the 1636 pearlware
sherds were represented by an MVC of 53 vessels, or 1 vessel for every
31 sherds (I've rounded decimals). The 2262 creamware sherds were
represented by 33 vessels, or 1 vessel to every 68 sherds. The dark green
bottle glass (arguably even harder to distinguish than undecorated creamware)
came to 29 vessels for 2650 sherds, or a rather worrying 1 vessel for every
91 sherds (Brooks 1996:39). This isn't a matter of people being careless
when counting, this is a very real problem that has very real consequences
for comparing data and for analytical techniques that rely on the MVC
(mean ceramic dates and Miller indices spring to mind).
The basic flaw would appear to be the implicit assumption that a
minimum vessel count is inherently coherent across an assemblage. It isn't.
"Each MVC for part of an assemblage is an MVC for that part alone rather being
a directly comparable absolute. In other words, the pearlware MVC (or perhaps
more accurately, the decorated vessel count) does indeed estimate the minimum
number of pearlware (or decorated) vessels, just as the creamware (or, if you
will, the undecorated) MVC estimates the minimum number of creamware
(or undecorated) vessels. The key words here are "estimates" and minimum".
Archaeologists have a tendency to treat MVC's as an absolute quantification of t
otals
rather than estimates of the minimum, and they are almost always the latter"
(Brooks 1996:40).
Like Dr. Malan, I'm open to suggestions. Count systems based on
assemblage weight or vessel completeness percentage would not appear to
be an option. For the former, you usually need to be able to separate all of th
e sherds
by form, and have an analogous complete vessel to weigh. The latter is highly
subjective in the absence of analagous vessels for comparison, although experien
ce
will help in that regard. Both of these might be feasible when you have an
assemblage with fairly large fragments, but they'll border on the nightmarish
when done with a highly fragmented assemblage. Perhaps all data are more
subjective than many of us would like to admit...
As far as basic description and identification are concerned, if
we can agree on whether to refer to "ironstone" or "white granite", we
might be on to something ;-) Someone else can tackle that one, though.
Alasdair M. Brooks
University of York
Source cited:
Brooks, A. 1996 "Analysis of Ceramics and Glass from the Quarter Site"
Mss. on file, Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest (Forest, Virginia)
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