We describe an ongoing research project on efficient methods for reconstruction of objects from large collections of irregular fragments, such as ancient pottery, collapsed murals, etc.. Our solution for flat objects uses multiscale matching and constrained dynamic programming, and we are now extending it to curved pottery fragments. We seek collaborative projects with museums and other potenti...

This article reports on the successful completion of a large-scale pilot project, where 3D scanning technology, and newly developed software to optimally identify the rotation axis of wheel-produced ceramics, were used as practical tools for pottery analysis. Approximately 1000 potsherds from several sites and periods were scanned, their axis of symmetry computed, and their mean profiles drawn....

Past peoples left behind preciously little for us to reconstruct their daily lives and histories. However, some types of archaeological material stand the test time better than others thanks durability ubiquity, foremost among them: ceramic evidence. Pottery often serves as a proxy reconstruction variety aspects past life: wealth city inhabitants, function spaces (Smith, 1987), cultural transmi...

Cylindrical objects made usually of fired clay but sometimes of stone were found at the Yarmukian Pottery Neolithic sites of Sha'ar HaGolan and Munhata (first half of the 8(th) millennium BP) in the Jordan Valley. Similar objects have been reported from other Near Eastern Pottery Neolithic sites. Most scholars have interpreted them as cultic objects in the shape of phalli, while others have ref...

The scale of late prehistoric sociopolitical complexity on the ColoracWPlateau has been widely debated in the American Southwest. Proponents of an alliance model useJeddito Yellow Ware) manufactured at Hopi Mesa villages) as one offtur index wares. This distributional study ofJeddito Yellow Ware challenges aspects of the alliance model by using a data set that contains over 430 yellow ware site...

Abstract Pottery kilns are a common feature in the archaeological record of different periods. However, these pyrotechnological installations still seldom target interdisciplinary investigations. To fill this gap our knowledge, an updraft kiln firing experiment was run at Campus Galli open-air museum (southern Germany) by team consisting experimental archaeologists, material scientists, geoarch...