The MET-Pottery–Dataset

The dataset was compiled within the SNSF project No 100011_156205 ‘Mobilities, Entanglements and Transformations in Neolithic Societies of the Swiss Plateau (3900-3500 BC)’, short ‘MET-project’,  conducted at the Institute of Archaeological Sciences, University of Bern between 2014 and 2018 (https://data.snf.ch/grants/grant/156205; https://boris.unibe.ch/77649/).

It represents the largest and temporally most highly resolved collection of morphological pottery data of the Central European Neolithic. It offers data of 1046 ceramic vessels of different styles that originate out of 44 archaeological features of wetland and dryland sites of the northern Alpine Space and adjacent regions. Most of the archaeological contexts – anthropogenic layers of settlements, pits, and ditches – are typology-independent dated using dendrochronology or C14-dates. The data set includes a spreadsheet of nominal and numeric morphological variables, the collection of the vessels’ semi-profile silhouettes and the typological drawings from which all data was collected. In the scope of the MET-project ‘the data was used to elaborate a new mixed method research (MMR) methodology to investigate social relations beyond problematic concepts of homogeneous ‘archaeological cultures’. It is highly relevant for further methodological morphology-based research on pottery.