Native American
Pottery: How did they do that?
Title
: How did they do that? Using Digital Image Processing to Reproduce Surface
Treatment Patterns on Native American Pottery
Catherine
Paszek
, Grade
5
, The
Londonderry School
, Harrisburg,
PA
Native American pottery sherds were found on an
island in the Susquehanna River near Lancaster, PA. The Sherds have treatment
markings on the surface of the pottery. This experiment will try to determine
how the patterns were originally created on the surface of the pottery. It is
believed that the patterns created when the Native Americans, possibly Middle
Woodland Period ( 200 – 500 AD), used cordage or fish nets wrapped around
the neck of the pot or over the whole pot to create a decorative pattern on the
pot. The shards and a latex mold of
the shard were scanned into a
digital file , in .TIFF format. The .TIFF file of the image was opened in
ScionImage, image processing software. The image was changed to a false color
and then processed by adjusting the LUT to change the contrast of the image. By
changing the contrast of the image, the original treatment patterns come into
view. With a good view of the original treatment patterns, this experiment
attempted to reproduce the same patterns as a way to test the Native American
method of pottery surface treatment. By using the processed images of the
pottery sherds, this experiment was able to recreate the patterns as they might
have originally appeared on the pottery.
•Using
a scanner and image processing software, the patterns originally created on
the surface of the pots were detected using the contrast and false color.
The student then recreated the same surface treatments with netting she
weaved herself.
Image on the left is a screenshot of Scion
Image, image processing software that was used in this project.
This project won the Kodak Student Junior Research Award at the
2000
National Imaging Technology in Education Conference at Rochester Institute
of Technology, Rochester, NY, July, 2000.
Back
to Individual Projects