Coiling or slab building: Potential of orientation analysis for identification of forming techniques used by Early Neolithic potters

Quantitative 3D orientation analysis of particles and voids to differentiate hand-built pottery forming techniques using X-ray microtomography and neutron tomography

“…The preferential orientation of objects within ceramic fabrics has also been advocated as a means to determine the primary forming techniques of pottery, with assessments made using a variety of techniques including ceramic thin sections (e.g. Courty and Roux 1995;Reedy et al 2014a, b;Roux and Courty 1998;Thér, 2016;Thér et al 2019;Thér and Mangel 2021;Thér and Toms 2016;Whitbread 1996;Woods 1985), thick sections (e.g. Lindahl and Pikirayi 2010;Ross et al 2018), 2D X-ray radiographs (e.g.…”

“…Subsequent stages of forming, usually performed after a period of drying, have been thought generally not to change the initial orientation of objects produced during primary forming; the principal exception to this being the paddle-and-anvil thinning technique that results in an additional alignment of objects towards vessel walls (Berg 2008(Berg , 2009Rye 1981). However, more recently it has been suggested that, to the contrary, secondary forming techniques do in fact substantially alter the orientation of particles near the margins of the vessel walls (Thér 2016;Thér et al 2019).…”

“…In practice, as noted by Thér et al (2019, p. 2), the direction and extent of preferential orientation among observed objects have conventionally been assessed in purely qualitative manners, or by reference to ordinal scales, with comparatively few attempts to apply more quantitative approaches. More recently, improvements in digital image analysis have led to renewed interest in the quantitative evaluation of object orientations using photomicrographs of thin sections and more objective assessments of forming techniques (Thér 2016;Thér and Toms 2016).…”

“…While a recent experimental study that included coil-and slab-building (which displays many similarities in fabric structure to percussion-building techniques (Rye 1981)) found distinct patterns of orientation in preformed constituent elements (i.e. coil sections and slabs), it could not consistently differentiate all vessels made with these techniques, and concluded that in some instances the additional forces used to join elements resulted in a significant reorientation of objects and an overlap in the distributions of the examined samples (Thér et al 2019). Consequently, the present study aims to investigate whether 3D object orientation analysis may offer an alternative approach to the differentiation of similar techniques.…”

“…typically, before firing, there is approximately an order of magnitude of difference between the length and width, and between the width and thickness, of each particle). Such differences in shape may facilitate the detection of object orientation, and similar organic materials have previously been used in other experimental pottery studies (Berg 2008;Foster 1989;Thér et al 2019).…”