Data and script analysis for the paper: Breakage and uncertainty

This folder contains all the scripts and data used to carry out the eye-tracking analysis of the paper Breakage and uncertainty: How potters learn from unpredictable phenomena. The README file explains the folder structure and the file composition as well as the content of the scripts and tables.

Paper abstract:

Given the ubiquity of ceramic materials in human history, much archaeological research focuses on understanding how people learn about pottery craftwork in social settings and the material consequences of this process. A crucial, yet often overlooked, aspect of pottery making is knowing where breakage can occur and how to respond, as highlighted in an anthropological theory of breakage. Cracks and faults arising from wheel-thrown pottery manufacture create visually distinct features, providing stimuli through which differences in visual attention across levels of expertise can be studied. We hypothesised that, as potters gain experience, their knowledge of faults becomes integrated into the generative model of the object, shaping how they visually explore it. To test this hypothesis, we drew on research on visual perception, attention, and eye guidance in complex, naturalistic visual scenes, recording eye movements from over 40 participants while they viewed images of vessels with or without typical cracks and faults in both a free-viewing and a task-based viewing experiment. Participants also performed a drawing task and answered structured questions about their craft knowledge. Results show clear differences between experts’ and non-experts’ visual responses, reflecting how experience shapes generative models guiding visual attention.