Pottery analysis and the archaeological context. Chosing samples, counting, weighing and interpreting materials in context
Most dig houses in the world and certainly all those in the Near East are characterised by thousands of crates with millions of pottery sherds. At the nearly 60-year-campaign-long Arslantepe dig house crates are wooden boxes lined up along the edge of the mound, that overshadow our work area and that get regularly spread out on a more than 100m long line of tables: our “sherd yard” and the “mega puzzle area” for the restorers (Bollati and Ghedin present volume, fig. 1).