Contemporaneously with Haskell's theoretical work and the British Museum's neutron activation studies, excavations were being conducted at Kommos on the southern coast of Crete by the University of Toronto, 15 years of excavation in all, ending in 1995, which turned up thousands pieces of what looked like export and import pottery.
The excavators and theorists of this effort adopted Haskell's term of “transport jars.”
Kommos was an LBA port networking extensively with Egypt and the Levant.

Following the lead of the British Museum, the project archaeologists decided it would be illuminating to the subject of trade contacts and relationships to conduct neutron activation studies of the origin of this pottery.
Accordingly, they prepared powdered samples of 18 stirrup jars, 13 short-necked amphorae, 34 Canaanite jars, 19 Egyptian jars, and 4 others subsequently reclassified, 88 in all, covering the span LM I B through LM III B. The stirrup jars covered LM II through LM III B. The goal was to test non-random geographical hypotheses about the compositional profiles of the samples; that is, the provenances, as had the British Museum.

The actual grouping by composition was done in advance by thin-section petrography, in which microscopically thin sections of the sample are mounted on a slide for visual inspection under a microscope.
The grains of the fabric can then be identified mineralogically and the sample classified according to the types of minerals found.
 The study found 26 fabrics concerning which hypotheses could be tested by neutron activation and analysis of variance; that is, for each group, were the samples in it randomly or not?
The cross-identification between fabric type and geologic region was assigned by inspection.
The cross-identification between region and elemental profile was an outcome of the methods chosen for statistical manipulation of the profiles.
These are beyond the scope of this article, but the theory is as follows.

Imagine an ideal clay bed in which the same elements are found at the same concentrations in every sample at random.
In a sufficient number of samples, the measured concentrations are expected to vary at random (defined mathematically) around a mean.
If any do not, then the sample comes from a bed containing higher amounts.
By comparing every element to a control element, presumed ideal; that is, at measured concentrations varying only at random, the investigators developed one or more profiles that were non-random.

The first problem was  to find a control element that was  always present in the same concentration, varying only randomly.
The investigators selected 27 elements for study, which might be presumed to be in every clay bed.
Only 16 of these were chosen for statistical  analysis, as the most reliable and representative.
As a control, or ideal, element, the investigators chose Scandium, a low-presence element that had the second-lowest variability.
The variation of each element in all the samples was calculated and compared to that of Scandium.
If it exceeded that of Scandium by a specific threshold, then the element was judged present in some sample in a non-random amount.
Further analysis pin-pointed which samples.
The end result was a series of nine elemental profiles, each representing a bed of unique chemical composition.
They were termed “Cretan chemical groups” I through IX.

There was obviously not a one-to-one match with the 26 fabrics.
The investigators chose the multi-fabric solution: more than one fabric might belong to the same chemical group.
The fabrics could then be grouped by chemical similarity in a dendrogram (which had no implications of descent).
Some of the conclusions they drew are:
The 9 types are divided into Cretan (I-III) and import (IV-IX).
All the Egyptian and Canaanite jars except two are from beds along the Nile or on the coastal plains of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel.
The two are apparently imitations of Canaanite jars in Cretan clay.
None of the stirrup jars or short-necked amphorae are imports.

Native Cretan types I-III are all in or adjacent t
Contemporaneously with Haskell's theoretical work and the British Museum's neutron activation studies, excavations were being conducted at Kommos on the southern coast of Crete by the University of Toronto, 15 years of excavation in all, ending in 1995, which turned up thousands pieces of what looked like export and import pottery. The excavators and theorists of this effort adopted Haskell's term of “transport jars.” Kommos was an LBA port networking extensively with Egypt and the Levant.
Following the lead of the British Museum, the project archaeologists decided it would be illuminating to the subject of trade contacts and relationships to conduct neutron activation studies of the origin of this pottery. Accordingly, they prepared powdered samples of 18 stirrup jars, 13 short-necked amphorae, 34 Canaanite jars, 19 Egyptian jars, and 4 others subsequently reclassified, 88 in all, covering the span LM I B through LM III B. The stirrup jars covered LM II through LM III B. The goal was to test non-random geographical hypotheses about the compositional profiles of the samples; that is, the provenances, as had the British Museum.
The actual grouping by composition was done in advance by thin-section petrography, in which microscopically thin sections of the sample are mounted on a slide for visual inspection under a microscope. The grains of the fabric can then be identified mineralogically and the sample classified according to the types of minerals found.  The study found 26 fabrics concerning which hypotheses could be tested by neutron activation and analysis of variance; that is, for each group, were the samples in it randomly or not? The cross-identification between fabric type and geologic region was assigned by inspection. The cross-identification between region and elemental profile was an outcome of the methods chosen for statistical manipulation of the profiles. These are beyond the scope of this article, but the theory is as follows.
Imagine an ideal clay bed in which the same elements are found at the same concentrations in every sample at random. In a sufficient number of samples, the measured concentrations are expected to vary at random (defined mathematically) around a mean. If any do not, then the sample comes from a bed containing higher amounts. By comparing every element to a control element, presumed ideal; that is, at measured concentrations varying only at random, the investigators developed one or more profiles that were non-random.
The first problem was  to find a control element that was  always present in the same concentration, varying only randomly. The investigators selected 27 elements for study, which might be presumed to be in every clay bed. Only 16 of these were chosen for statistical  analysis, as the most reliable and representative. As a control, or ideal, element, the investigators chose Scandium, a low-presence element that had the second-lowest variability. The variation of each element in all the samples was calculated and compared to that of Scandium. If it exceeded that of Scandium by a specific threshold, then the element was judged present in some sample in a non-random amount. Further analysis pin-pointed which samples. The end result was a series of nine elemental profiles, each representing a bed of unique chemical composition. They were termed “Cretan chemical groups” I through IX.
There was obviously not a one-to-one match with the 26 fabrics. The investigators chose the multi-fabric solution: more than one fabric might belong to the same chemical group. The fabrics could then be grouped by chemical similarity in a dendrogram (which had no implications of descent). Some of the conclusions they drew are:
The 9 types are divided into Cretan (I-III) and import (IV-IX). All the Egyptian and Canaanite jars except two are from beds along the Nile or on the coastal plains of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. The two are apparently imitations of Canaanite jars in Cretan clay. None of the stirrup jars or short-necked amphorae are imports.
Native Cretan types I-III are all in or adjacent t
Stirrup jar