since ‘body sherds are often impossible to match’ (Orton and Hughes, 2013: 266). Moreover,
the focus for linkages is most often on sherds that can be directly adjoined or matched. This perspective has narrowed the understanding of results achievable from sherd re-fitting, leading
to an underappreciation of the broad informative potential of
this practice (Blanco-Gonzalez and Chapman, 2014). Indeed,
secure ceramic matches constitute a rare, random and unrepresentative
subset (Sullivan, 1989: 104) out of the array of associations
actually recognizable between potsherds, necessitating
the development of methods that can securely identify these
associations.