A Method for Measuring Relative Abundance of Fragmented Archaeological Ceramics
John E. Byrd, Dalford D. Owens · Journal of Field Archaeology · 1997
Archaeologists commonly use simple counts of specimens as a measure of relative abundance for various fragmented archaeological materials. Simple counts, however, are prone to error due to the differential size of fragments. A more valid measure that approximates surface area is the effective area (EA). This measure offers a simple solution to the problem of quantifying ceramics from archaeological contexts.