The Eren Lab at ѿappUniversity’s Department of Anthropology is among the university’s busiest and most prolific. Because of the lab and guidance from Metin Eren, Ph.D., assistant professor of anthropology and director of archaeology in the College of Arts and Sciences, two students have achieved great accomplishments in archaeology.
Graduate student Ashley Rutkoski designed a novel experiment to explore how ancient pots were discarded.
“After stone, ceramic sherds are one of the most abundant things we find in the archaeological record,” Eren said.
Doctoral student Michelle Bebber, an art and anthropology graduate from The University of Akron, has made ancient pottery a part of the lab’s focus. The Eren Lab’s approach is to make replicas of ancient tools and pottery, then break them to study their strength and structural features.
Bebber’s solo article in the Journal of Archaeological Science presents an argument that pottery was not made the way it was made for the reasons long believed by scholars.