Minimum Standards for Quantifying Pottery

This paper presents a summary of the results recently published of a national conference which was held in France, in Mont-Beuvray, in April 1998. The aim of this conference was to discuss the different methods used for quantitative studies of pottery and to confront the methods used in contemporary studies. We needed a common method which would be accepted by most archaeologists, which was scientifically as sound as possible, and which would also be the simplest, the most efficient, and the least time-consuming. This approach is not new. It is simply the adoption of minimum common standards to permit relevant comparisons between different regions, periods and settlements.