Possibilities and limitations in applying the geometric morphometrics method for analysis of the clay pot shape

The paper focuses on testing possibilities of the geometric morphometricsmethod taking the analysis of the shape of 99 intact pots from the Balanovo burialground attributed to the Balanovo archaeological culture as an example. A preliminaryexamination of these pots from the positions of the historical and cultural approachprovided an opportunity to identify distinctive features of cultural traditions associatedwith two closely related population groups (the Balanovo and the Atlikasy groups), whichleft behind this burial ground. The possibilities of the geometric morphometrics methodwere studied by describing the shape of the pots with the help of, first, 50 marks madeequally apart; and, second, the points where the local curvature was maximum. Whereasboth methods produced similar general information on the shapes, it was more detailedand close to the results obtained with the use of the historical and cultural approach in thesecond case. However, without preliminary historical and cultural analysis of the shape,the employment of the geometric morphometrics method does not result in evidence-based historical interpretation of the identified features of the earliest ceramics. For thisreason, the method can be applied for analysis of pot shapes only as a secondary method.