Individuals in two groups, a “social pressure” and an “individualist” group, completed incised designs on wet clay plaques in two sessions. Principal Components Analysis and Discriminant Analysis provided strong support for the proposition that individual patterns of motor-performance are significantly influenced by the social environment of their acquisition.

These results are significant to the way archaeologists interpret apparently motor-performance related attributes of artifact manufacture, decoration, and even use. Apprenticeship’s distinct social context, and even periodicity, is likely to heavily influence aspects of standardization, “skill”, content, technique, and so on. The great potential for studies of ancient motor-performance in craft production lies not in a search for the “key” to identifying past individual artisans (although this may be possible in some settings) but in the characterization of the learning process itself as embedded in distinct social-cum-technical contexts. A corollary to this is the observation that a great deal more ethnoarchaeological study of craft and apprenticeship will be required before archaeological patterns of motor-performance can lead to firm social interpretations.

I conducted an actualistic study in order to test archaeological methods utilizing motor habit performance related “microvariables” as a means to identify the work of individual prehistoric potters.

I found, contra Hill (1977), that motor-performance related attributes of incised geometric designs are in fact quite sensitive to the social context of learning, and change significantly over time.

My M.A. research involved the analysis of pottery vessels from Princess Point Complex sites in the lower Grand River valley of Southern Ontario, Canada. The observation of both site-specific and pan-Princess Point patterns of attribute constellations provided a context for discussing the social significance of stylistic diversity in the earliest hunting-fishing-gardening communities of Southern Ontario.

Traditional typological and attribute-based approaches to ceramic analysis proved, by themselves, inadequate for characterizing significant trends in Princess Point decorative and morphological dimensions. Instead, the strengths of both approaches were combined by the use of an hierarchically organized attribute coding system developed for eastern woodland pottery by my advisor, Dr. David G. Smith, and a multivariate statistical method that allowed for the inductive identification of recurring attribute constellations.

An assessment of the “structuredness” and fluidity of design attribute choices and combinations in Princess Point assemblages, with reference to the contemporaneous Sandbanks Tradition, revealed significant patterns that may relate to the development of more sedentary horticultural communities at this time. Sandbanks pottery demonstrates a high level of freedom and fluidity in design attribute combinations, both locally and regionally. Princess Point ceramic design, by contrast, appears to have conformed to a more limited set of decorative elements, and was more syntagmatically structured, especially locally (within stable settlement communities).