Estimating parent population of pottery vessels from a sample of fragments: a case study from inter-tidal surface collections, Roviana Lagoon, Solomon Islands

► The number of vessel classes in a breakage population is estimated from a sample of sherds. ► The number of vessels in the sample is approximately a Binomial distribution with mean N (1 − qn), variance Nqn (1 − qn). ► N is the total vessel population, n is the number of sherds per vessel, p is the sampling fraction, q = 1 − p. ► Completeness is distributed as mean of k truncated binomial random variables, k = # of vessels in sample. ► Distribution of completeness is approximately Normal, mean = np/(1 − qn), variance = (npq/(1 − qn) − (n2p2qn/(1 − qn)2)/k).