This study explores the effects of the copying error process on material culture. The goal is to assess whether the morphometric variability of standardized vessels, generated by copying errors, can reveal both collective and individual signatures. In this perspective, we collected a corpus of 320 present-day standardized water jars, made by 23 Indian expert potters belonging to two endogamous communities distributed between eight villages. The vessels are analyzed through advanced shape analysis of ceramic vessels. The issue is to assess whether morphometric variability is observable at the ‘community,’ the ‘village,’ and the ‘individual’ scales. The results show a clear separation between the two endogamous communities, even when barely visible by the naked eye. Furthermore, village-level trends can be obtained, especially when village productions are associated with distinct learning networks. Identifying individual signatures within standardized production made by multiple potters belonging to the same learning network remains challenging.

本研究探讨复制错误过程对物质文化的影响。目的是评估由复制错误产生的标准化容器的形态变化是否可以揭示集体特征和个体特征。从这个角度来看，我们收集了一个由320个印度专业陶工组成的语料库，该水罐目前由分布在八个村庄之间的两个内婚族的23个印度专家陶工制作。通过对陶瓷容器进行高级形状分析来分析容器。问题在于评估在“社区”，“村庄”和“个人”尺度下形态学变异性是否可观察到。结果表明，即使用肉眼几乎看不见，两个配子群落之间也存在明显的分离。此外，可以获得村级趋势，特别是当乡村生产与独特的学习网络相关联时。在由属于同一学习网络的多个陶工制作的标准化生产中，识别单个签名仍然具有挑战性。