Novel Geometric Morphometric (GMM) Application to the Study of Bronze Age Tutuli

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the morphological diversity of the tutuli object group from the earlier Nordic Bronze Age (henceforth NBA) – an often over-looked object group despite their abundance specially, temporally and contextually. Currently, only a few studies of the morphological diversity of tutuli have been published, and these consist primarily of decade-old-typologies. The objective of this of this paper is first and foremost methodological, as we examine two research questions – concerning classification and periodisation – through a novel two-dimensional geometric morphometric (henceforth GMM) framework and subsequent multivariate analysis. Inherently we examine whether specific shapes conform to the classificatory of the Montelius typology, and whether a temporal relationship exists between types and shapes.