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Alan Vince 1999Formal assessment of potential of archaeological ceramics is a process that came into existence in the UK following the publication of the Management of Archaeological Projects (2nd Edition) by English Heritage in 1992 and known now as MAP2.
Initially, assessment was only required for projects funded by English Heritage but it rapidly gained the status of 'best practice' and is now carried out in the UK on most archaeological projects, whatever the funding agency.
If you are managing an archaeological project where large quantities of ceramics have been found then you have a duty to your organisation to ensure that the potential of this collection is realised but at the same time you will want to kerb unnecessary expenditure, either of time or money.
The authors of MAP2 were of the opinion (probably sometimes justified) that in the recent past archaeologists were blinded by the quantity of finds rather than thinking carefully about what might be achieved by studying them.
I should stress that assessment was a sensible response to the vast assemblages that were being excavated from some urban excavations but that if you only have a small collection the extra cost and delay brought about by assessment cannot be justified (this is my personal opinion). However, archaeology in the UK is now almost fully commercial and if someone wants an assemblage of pottery assessed, rather than studied and published, and they have the funds then that's what will happen.
All archaeological projects should set out their aims and objectives at the outset and then review and modify these after conclusion of the fieldwork. The study of ceramics from a project can usually help to further the projects aims and objectives. There are, however, a set of aims and objectives which seem to cover most circumstances:
In any region and period archaeologists will have adopted conventional classifications for ceramics. Some of these are based on ceramic petrology and some are based on visual identification based on a bundle of criteria (colour, surface treatment, decorative method and principal inclusions). To assess the ceramics from a site, a middle ground has to be sought so that enough information is gleaned to allow the date and approximate source of the material to be discovered without getting down to the nitty gritty of recording the characteristics of each sherd under a stereo microscope.
For any project the major pottery reports from the region are used as a starting point but quite often wares are found that cannot be paralleled in these publications and these are recorded with enough detail to enable their records to be retrieved. If there is sufficient material these will probably be recommended for further work.
For the UK, there are national form classifications for the Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Medieval periods. For the post-medieval period, from the 16th century to the 18th century, there is a gap and, unfortunately, this period coincides with an increase in the variety of forms used. Nevertheless, there is broad agreement over most of the terminology. The situation is more complex in the early modern period since there is much more evidence for the contemporary classification of pottery, in the form of pattern books, adverts, literary references, paintings and inventories. I am well aware of the inadequacies of our response as archaeologists to this relatively recent material and also aware that many collections are pre-sorted before assessment to exclude 'modern' material.
Typology has proved to be a very powerful technique for the study of ceramics. both for dating and the study of interaction of one potter's mental template on another's.
The potential of a collection for typological study is measured simply by counting the present of typological features: rims, spouts, handles, decorated sherds, bases and feet.
Increasingly, the traditional methods of identifying pottery use are being supplemented by the use of organic chemistry, although for most projects this is still a highly expensive and experimental technique.
A lot can still be gained, however, by the study of sooting patterns, food deposits and wear traces and the presence of these is noted as part of the assessment.
Potsherds and broken tile are almost indestructible. This is both an advantage, in that they can be guaranteed to survive in quantity on most archaeological sites, and a disadvantage, in that they can be recycled every time the ground is disturbed. The extent to which pottery, and other finds, were often distributed away from their place of use before burial is only now becoming apparent, as a result of large-scale excavation in which finds retrieval is controlled by sieving. Therefore, attention has to be given to any evidence that might either demonstrate the redeposition of pottery or its post-breakage movement. Such attributes include joining sherds of the same vessel (sherd families), the presence of concretions (such as calcium phosphate and vivianite) over broken sherd edges, chemical weathering (leaching) and mechanical weathering (abrasion).
The extent to which one tries to interpret this data as part of an assessment, rather than noting that it exists is a moot point. Quite often the detailed stratigraphic data required to make sense of the site taphonomy will not be in a state where it could be used for this purpose.
Dating the pottery found on a site, pottery assemblages, and the stratigraphy in which they are found, as part of an assessment is not a simple matter, especially since it is likely that the site taphonomy will not have been completely understood at this stage.
In my assessments I provide two separate products:
Whether or not the pottery from a site should be recorded formally as part of an assessment is a matter for discussion. Most UK ceramic specialists consider that it should but a case can be made that the status of the resulting records is very different from those created as part of the full study. However, in cases where no further work is recommended then a basic archive should be created.
I use a relational database for each of retrieval but a comma-separated ASCII file and explanatory tables documenting each field is probably more future-proof (and takes up a lot less disk space).
The exact contents of this archive may be stipulated by the excavating organisation and the various period-based study groups concerned with pottery from archaeological sites in the UK have recently agreed a minimum standard. Once this is published all data recorded by the consultancy will be compliant with it.
This is the most important part of the assessment report and involves placing the material into a research context. There is a tendency to over-sell the importance of the collection, in the hope that simply stating in as many ways as possible that the material is exciting, important, valuable and so on will loosen the purse strings. On the other hand, it is quite possible for the regional importance of an assemblage to be unrecognised since in many cases context and geographical position make all the difference. To give just one example, in England there is a sharp fall-off in the frequency of imported pottery away from the coast and major towns, in the Roman period, the mid-Saxon period and later. The significance of imported pottery will therefore vary according to the distance of the site from the coast.
Decisions as to whether any pottery needs to be drawn, photographed, submitted for scientific characterisation or organic chemical analysis all need to be made and justified.
Where further work is recommended the consultancy can provide a costing for carrying out this work, or provide a specification to allow the client to obtain quotes.
©
Alan Vince 1999