On General Approach and Methods of Vessels’ Shapes Systemic Study

The article is devoted to further development of historical-and-cultural approach and methods of earthenware vessels study. A.A. Bobrinsky laid the principles of the approach and respective methods in several articles (Bobrinsky, 1986, 1988a, b, 1991). Three main stages of vessel shapes study are expounded in the article: preparatory, analytical and interpretation stages. The main attention is paid to the analytical stage. It is assumed that content of the interpretation stage will be expounded in a special article based on specific ethnographic and archeological materials. Within framework of analytical stage of vessel shapes study 5 levels of analysis are considered successively: I – analysis of general proportionality (GP) of vessel forms; II – analysis of vessel shapes’ natural structure; III – analysis of extent of functional parts’ maturity; IV – analysis of vessel shapes’ elementary structure; V – analysis of vessel shapes’ curved line (“covers”). Various aspects of potters’ cultural traditions in the sphere of certain vessel shapes creation are analyzed at all levels. At the same time the deeper is the level of shapes analysis, the more detailed cultural peculiarities of population and potters are discovered and fixed. Every level of analysis can be applied to any of 7 functional parts that form the natural structure of specific vessels. It should be emphasized that in this article an extent of functional parts’ maturity is analyzed in considerably greater detail than it was done earlier. Some rules of vessel shapes comparative analysis are expounded in the concluding section. Such analysis is performed pursuant to research tasks in two directions: in direction of certain potters’ individual skills and in direction of cultural traditions of human collectives. In the latter case an extent of cultural homogeneity of collective traditions is fixed. Infraction of the pottery traditions may be related to cultural infiltration (which brings about the beginning of mixture process), to different stages of cultural integration (which means development of mixture process) and to cultural assimilation (the mixture process completion).