Identifying and evaluating atypical traits in Ancient Egyptian glass vessels using raw data analysis and expert assessment

The descriptive data pertaining to the remaining, largely intact, glass vessels produced in ancient Egypt between the reigns of Thutmosis IV (1401-1391 BC) and Pinudjem II (959-945 BC) contained in ‘Die Glasgefäße im Alten Ägypten’ [The Glass Vessels in Ancient Egypt], was extracted and standardised to create a dataset that could be analysed to determine the most typical and atypical features of vessels attributed to the New Kingdom in the corpus. Seven descriptive categories were assessed based on the percentage of incidence to determine if a vessel could be defined as statistically ‘atypical’. An expert’s evaluation was employed as a second assessment method. The two methods identified 76 vessels from a total number of 320 vessels and agreed on 16 vessels considered as atypical, all of which had little or no provenance information. The resulting 76 vessels identified as ‘atypical’ by the combined methods were subsequently compared with the respective provenance information and current location to determine patterns of collection and distribution throughout the world. The data showed that the Americas held the largest number of vessels that had little or no provenance data, including those held in private collections. The combined atypical tests identified that the Americas hold the largest proportion of atypical vessels. It is not the intention of this research to undermine the authenticity of vessels but to determine if data methods can be used to identify atypical traits in archaeological collections and to encourage the application of archaeometric testing to provide supporting information on statistically rare objects.