You can have your cake and eat it! A mixed methods approach for ceramic classification

Terms of “Neolithic cultures” are still used to describe spatial and temporal differences in pottery styles across central Europe. These terms date back to research periods when absolute dating methods were lacking and typological classification was used to establish chronologies. They are charged with problematic, biasing notions of social configurations: cultural homogeneity, spatial boundedness, and immobility. In this presentation, we present an alternative approach to pottery classification by using ceramics from dendrochronologically and C14-dated sites of the 40th–38th c. BC located in the northern Alpine Foreland to overcome these issues. We developed two classification methods to approach stylistic and morphological similarities and dissimilarities between the pottery of different sites: (1.) a qualitative impressionistic classification of the vessels’ designs that allows to understand social practices of pottery production from the actors’ perspective; (2.) a quantitative computational unsupervised classification using t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbour Embedding (t-SNE) and Hierarchical Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (HDBSCAN) for cluster analyses based on the pottery vessels’ profile shape and further variables that allows to explore those social practices connected to the pottery consumption across several settlements. Using both combined, the problematic models of Neolithic societies following the cultural-historical paradigm can be deconstructed by inquiring directions and rhythms of spatial mobility based on material entanglements in pottery that are indicative for social configurations.