Pottery is a metaphorical gold mine for archaeologists. Well-preserved ceramics offer a rare glimpse into the lives of past societies, their cultures, traditions, and how they expressed status. When analyzing such finds, stamps and inscriptions are often key.

This is certainly the case for Dries Daems and Jitte Waagen, digital archaeologists at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the University of Amsterdam, who have been working on analyzing Hellenistic mold-made relief bowls. These ceramics, which were popular around 200–100 BCE, featured distinctive patterns. But they consisted of varying combinations and were made using a variety of different stamps, which allowed for a potentially infinite number of decorative patterns. This also made them quite tricky to identify.

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