REVERSEACTION Project

Disentangling Technological Traditions: Comparative Analysis of Chaînes Opératoires of Painted Pre-Hispanic Ceramics From Nariño, Colombia Occurring throughout the Americas, ceramics with negative decoration have been variously used as archaeological markers of chronology, provenance, ethnic affiliation, or cultural interaction. In the h...

Read here (extended abstract available in Spanish) ➡️ www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

5/5 ❤️ The result? We can start to identify real and meaningful differences in how different ancient communities crafted vessels with unique shapes and recipes 🏺

Stats is not just for spreadsheets, it can also tell us stories of human creativity! #Archaeology #DataScience #StatisticsInAction

4/5 📈 #MANOVA tests (to test whether identified ware clusters really mean something)

3/5 🎨 #PCA plots (to reduce the many variables we take under consideration and look for trends across pottery styles, dates, and #archaeological sites)

2/5 🌀 #EllipticalFourierAnalysis (to translate the curves that make up pottery shapes into equations!)

1/5 📊✨ #WorldStatsDay meets Ancient Pottery!
Did you know REVERSEACTION uses statistics to study archaeological materials?

Our recent paper in #OpenArchaeology reveals new insights into pottery from pre-Hispanic Nariño, #Colombia, by turning vessel shapes and paste compositions into numbers using:

We are HIRING 🎉 REVERSEACTION are seeking a Research Assistant in Archaeometallurgy

PLEASE SHARE

🗓️Applications close May 30th 2025

➡️More info available at www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/51186/

#archaeologicalscience #archaeology #colombia #metallurgy #archaeometallurgy #materialsscience

@justalittleroo.bsky.social would like you all to know that she was also there supporting her team from the side-lines (she got fomo and booked a holiday) and as such we have fixed the first photo accordingly #archaeologistoffduty #stillinamuseum

Woman poses with museum display cabinet

Thank you very much for the invitation and the hard work to the organisers from the Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg, the German Mining Museum in Bochum, and the Museo Nacional de Costa Rica.

Jasmine discussed the computational modelling of Muisca goldwork; and Marcos introduced the overarching goals and recent results of the REVERSEACTION project.

Jasmine discussed the #computationalmodelling of #Muisca goldwork; and Marcos introduced the overarching goals and recent results of the #REVERSEACTION project.

Lina talked about her work on #Malibú #goldwork and its role in local #ontologies in the Colombian Caribbean. In the words of Lina, it was "astonishing to see the similarities of the Costa Rican collections with the northern Colombian metalwork" 3/

The workshop connected researchers working on the topic in the #IntermediateArea and #Mexico, revealing fascinating continuities and discontinuities in the use of metals by communities in the past, and sparking discussion on various approaches to their study and interpretation 2/ #archaeology

Two women take a selfie with a large ancient stone sphere

In March, Lina María Campos Quintero, @jasminevieri.bsky.social, and Marcos Martinón-Torres participated in a workshop about #earlymetallurgy from Mexico to #Colombia, in San José, #CostaRica 1/

Disentangling Technological Traditions: Comparative Analysis of Chaînes Opératoires of Painted Pre-Hispanic Ceramics From Nariño, Colombia Occurring throughout the Americas, ceramics with negative decoration have been variously used as archaeological markers of chronology, provenance, ethnic affiliation, or cultural interaction. In the h...

📢 New #OpenAccess publication in Open Archaeology 📢 We present the first comparative tech analysis of painted Pre-Hispanic ceramics from #Nariño, #Colombia, combining #GMM of 3D models, #pXRF, #Raman, and #SEM

Read here ➡️
www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi... @degruyterbrill.bsky.social

PAID #INTERNSHIP for undergrads, with free accommodation in #Cambridge!

Projects in:
- Animal #SocialScience
- Physical Activity #Research
- #Archaeology
- #CognitiveScience
- Social Research

Please #SHARE & help us reach more individuals and HE Departments #wideningparticipation #scicomm

Thinking about postgrad research in the humanities and social sciences but not sure it’s for you?

Apply for our paid research experience internships by Friday 28 Feb to spend your summer with our incredible research community bit.ly/3PqhpRB

Join the @reverseaction.bsky.social team!

Preparing some resin-embedded ceramic samples for SEM-EDS analysis 🧐 for a full post on why we do this kind of analysis on ceramics scroll down our page 👀

#archaeology #archaeologicalscience #sampleprep

www.instagram.com/reel/DFFbUoI...

Estos bloques contienen pequeños fragmentos de copas de Nariño (provenientes de objetos ya rotos), y esperamos investigar la composición de la pasta de arcilla. (3/3)

🇨🇴 ¡Feliz Año Nuevo! ¡REVERSEACTION ya ha regresado a los laboratorios para preparar bloques pulidos para análisis con microscopía electrónica de barrido! (2/3)

Happy New Year from REVERSEACTION who have been back in the labs already, preparing polished blocks for the SEM! These blocks contain small fragments of Nariño vessels (from already broken sherds) and we hope to investigate the clay fabric 💪 (1/3)

#ArchaeologicalScience #archaeology

El material suplementario incluye un resumen extendido en español: ars.els-cdn.com/content/imag...

All of the data and code are fully reproducible and publicly available on a dedicated repository: github.com/jmkvieri/BBLoP

Funded by AHRC, ERC (@reverseaction.bsky.social), and the Osk. Huttunen foundation.

6️⃣The new modelling tools are readily applicable beyond archaeometallurgy, e.g, to compositional studies on ceramics or glass, or even to modelling the variability of diets in isotopic studies

5️⃣The new tools were applied to the study of Muisca goldwork from pre-Hispanic Colombia (AD 600-1600). The findings suggest the intra-regional circulation of imported gold, with people pooling metals from a variety of geological sources for communal festivities.

4️⃣Hierarchical (multilevel) model specifications can simultaneously consider both local and regional patterns in past craft production activities, whilst also accounting for sampling uncertainty. Think of it as zooming in and out on the past!

3️⃣Variability in dispersion can tell us about behavioural factors in the past—like centralised control over resources or local improvisation. For example:

High dispersion ➡️ decentralised or improvised production
Low dispersion ➡️ more standardised practices

2️⃣Compositional averages are often used to identify the desired performance characteristics of materials or in reconstructing artefact provenance.

But what if compositional dispersions are just as revealing?

We move beyond averages in explicitly defining 4 main sources of compositional variability

1️⃣Compositional data are often skewed and heteroskedastic, making them challenging to model.

Traditional approaches within archaeology, such as simple linear regression on log-transformed data, can make numerically impossible predictions.

Beta regression is shown to be a more robust alternative

Beyond baselines of performance: Beta regression models of compositional variability in craft production studies Chemical analyses of archaeological artefacts are often used for provenance studies and for assessing whether specific performance characteristics wer…

New paper out in JAS on beta regression models of compositional variability in craft production studies!

Huge thanks to co-authors @ercrema.bsky.social, María Alicia Uribe Villegas, Juanita Sáenz Samper and @martinontorres.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Key takeaways: 👇

Photos via @archaeologyuk.bsky.social