archaeological objects are almost be discovered as a broken and mixed peaces in a large location so, the process of manually re-assembly is a tedious task and requires a long time especially in the case of loss of some of the pieces. what is the statistical tools that helped in solving reconstruction of fragmented (in addition of Principal component, cluster analysis, Discriminant analysis)
There could be various aims. One reason that it is done is to later put the object on display.
The reasons all depend upon the culture and the type of pottery involved - i.e. low-volume coarse wares; high-volume mass produced fine wares or modern industrial ceramics produced in huge volumes. It also depends upon whether pottery was made and used locally or was traded over long distances.
For example in the Roman period fine wares (e.g. Samian wares or Rhenish wares) were traded all over the empire. Some of these have characteristic makers marks or short-lives styles. These are very useful in relative dating between several sites and also give clues to trade routes and the broader economy. Later, Chinese and Islamic wares were traded over huge areas of the Old World. Later still of course modern wares were traded all over the spheres of influence of different trading nations.
Unless the ceramics are found in tombs they are likely to be small sherds found in among refuse layers. Reconstruction - either with glue or simply by drawing profiles - allows a typology of rim, body and base forms to be consrtucted that are then published, allowing archaeologists at different sites to get some ideas of relative dating of their deposits.
There is a method that is note exclusively statistical that has been termed a "virtual nodule" approach for analyzing lithics. Look at the following references:
Larson, Mary Lou and Marcel Kornfeld 1997 Chipped stone nodules: theory method, and examples. Lithic Technology 22:4-18.
Sellet, Frédèric 2006 The inference of mobility patterns from sone tools. In Archaeology and Ethnoarchaeology of Mobility, edited by F. Sellet, R. Greaves, and P. L. Yu, pp. 221-239. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
Sellet, Frédèric 1999 A dynamic View of Paleoindian Assemblages at the Hell Gap site, Wyoming: Reconstructing Lithic Technology Systems. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology. Southern Methodist University, Dallas. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor.
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