When handicraft experts face novelty: Effects of shape and wheel familiarity on individual and community standardization of ceramic vessels

Abstract

Indian Prajapati and Multani Kumhar potting communities use different wheels in throwing their vessels. Highly-experienced potters from these communities threw assemblages of (i) familiar shapes using their familiar wheels, (ii) unfamiliar shapes using their familiar wheels and (iii) unfamiliar shapes using unfamiliar wheels. We analyzed how the potters dealt with the novelty provided by the unfamiliar shapes and wheels by assessing their effects on the degree of assemblage standardization. When throwing familiar shapes with familiar wheels, potters demonstrated a high degree of standardization, both at the level of the individual potter and at the level of their respective communities. Throwing unfamiliar shapes considerably affected standardization, especially for the more difficult shapes. Hence, novelty may be detected in archaeological assemblages by the coexistence of (large quantities of) highly standardized artifacts of one type and (smaller quantities of) less standardized artifacts of another type. However, throwing the unfamiliar shapes on unfamiliar wheels (“borrowed” from the other community) did not give rise to additional markers of novelty in the assemblages produced. Thus, at least part of the expert potters’ skill can be transferred from their usual conditions of practice to new, unfamiliar conditions without leaving observable traces in the artifacts produced.