On Methods of Studying the Cultural Traditions Mix in Creating Clay Vessels Shapes from Archaeological Sites

The article is dedicated to the development of an approach for studying the mixing of various cultural traditions in the creation of clay vessel shapes from archaeological sites. The sources of study are experimental ethnographic materials – a series of vessels made by professional potters in the 1960s–1980s during the project of the Comprehensive Pottery Study Expedition led by A.A. Bobrinsky. The research is based on the idea that when making the series of vessels of a traditional form, a potter could use certain deviations from the “standard” ceramics shape. According to the studied sources, we established how often and in what specific parameters these deviations in vessel shapes occur. For systematization, we took into account a previously established experimental-ethnographic division of parameters into more stable (general proportionality of the product, the angle of inclination of the shoulder-forearm, and body) and less stable (angle of inclination of the cheek-neck, proportionality of the cheek-neck, shoulder-forearm, and body). All these procedures made it possible to identify deviations from the standards that are not typical for the individual traditions of different potters. These included deviations in two or three stable parameters or in any three other parameters of vessel shapes. We assume that this deviation can be interpreted as a result of the mixing of various cultural traditions in the creation of ancient clay vessel shapes found at the archaeological sites. The proposed methods of analysis were successfully tested on the example of jugs from the Dmitrievsky burial ground of the Saltovo-Mayatsk culture. The jugs of “mixed shapes” were made by the bearers of different traditions of the Northern Caucasus: the most stable skills in the Kislovodsk Basin and less stable skills in Northern Ossetia/Eastern Caucasus.