Akiva Sanders: PhD

Dan David Fellow in the Study of the Past, Tel Aviv University

Work and play:  Early Bronze Age transformations in the demographics of ceramic production

Penn Museum Classroom L2
September 20 from 4:00pm to 5:30pm

Fingerprints left during the production of archaeologically recovered objects allow us to make direct measurements of the bodies of the producers of these objects, and thus have a unique potential in understanding the life histories of ancient workers.  Specifically, fingerprint impressions on ceramics, which form the most ubiquitous category of objects collected from most excavated sites, have the potential to provide a large quantity of data for this aim. The methodologies that have been used until now to collect and analyze this data leave much to be desired, however. Now, a new Bayesian statistical model has been developed that begins to overcome these persistent issues by leveraging advances in computing power to analyze fingerprint datasets as whole populations, allowing the analysis of each print to inform the interpretation of other prints in the assemblage.