This article considers the results of an analysis undertaken on pottery recovered mostly from multi-phase Iron Age sites in the Trans-Urals region of Russia. It focuses on a particular project involving fieldwork and the subsequent analysis of archaeological contexts and the laboratory studies of pottery morphology, ornamentation, technology, and statistics, with an attempt to apply the concept of style. This type of research project is unusual for Russian ceramic studies and the article begins with a consideration of the formal typological approach to the study of artefacts, which is a traditional aspect of Russian archaeology and is still the primary focus of many research programmes.
