Sherd Analysis & Database Creation: Hajji Firuz
Semester: Spring 2024
Faculty Advisor: Jennie Bradbury
Field Site: Penn Museum
Field Supervisor: Katherine Blanchard
Praxis Poster:
Liz Larsen_Poster_Final_S24
Further Context:
This semester, I engaged in an independent study in the Near East section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology under the supervision of the Keeper, Katherine Blanchard. I was given several options for projects and ultimately selected an endeavor concerning a specific site in North-Western Iran: Hajji Firuz Tepe.
On-site, my responsibilities centered around data creation, photography, and data entry (in that order). I’d pull out and process one tray of ceramic sherds at a time, writing down their object and area numbers and creating a short description. Then, I’d move on to photography and ultimately digitize my gathered data for upload to the public database on the Penn Museum’s website.
When approaching this opportunity, I adopted a set of intentions for my research. The first of these was to explore and then implement the approaches and techniques archaeologists utilize in ceramic analysis. Along the way, I hoped to familiarize myself with the archaeology of the given region and chronological period and then unpack points of academic discourse specific to it. The goal in selecting these aims was to orient myself towards gathering data for a cumulative final project that would allow me to demonstrate an understanding of ceramic analysis via its application.
As the semester began, a couple of things became clear:
1) The material that I had been directed towards processing was not primarily from Hajji Firuz and instead was a mix between it and two other sites that had also been excavated in the region around the same time: Dalma and Pisdeli. In fact, the material from Hajji Firuz was squarely in the minority.
2) Given the newly realized range of material (as my chronological timescale roughly doubled in span), it would be difficult to use my data as a case study for considering the discipline of ceramic analysis generally.
As my project continued, I shifted my focus toward the discussion and ontology of chronological and cultural transitions in ceramic analysis. Also, in response to the range of material I was dealing with, I chose to integrate my simultaneous studies in computer science and use Python to analyze the data I was creating. This helped me to select a smaller sample of the pieces that I have processed, specifically ones coming from a couple of stratigraphic layers at Dalma, which I am including in the mock pottery analyst’s report that will serve as my final project.