Finding the Potential Potter: An Experimental Analysis of Woodland Pottery Decoration Techniques

ABSTRACT Archaeological approaches to “finding the individual” have been applied through various material avenues. Pottery production has been considered an effective avenue to identify idiosyncratic variation, but there has been little work to evaluate fundamental assumptions of attribution studies. This paper addresses how differences in decorative techniques can influence our ability to identify the actions of an individual. In an experimental study, participants applied decoration by incising and linear stamping techniques. Element size, element width, and gap width were evaluated through principal component analysis to identify possible patterning. The author had considerably more success identifying individual variation in linear stamping compared to variation caused by incising techniques. The author argues the stamping technique is more recognizably individualized due to the higher number of actions that can be related to measurable variables used to identify individual variation. The results indicate that idiosyncratic variation among potters will be more effectively recognized when potters apply certain decorative techniques.