Pottery technology and function

Pottery represents the largest find group in almost all excavations in Egypt. Whilst not every context type can and should be treated in the same way, each of them provides data and insight into the history of the site under scrutiny. Besides dating also typology and functional issues can be highlighted.

Even very broken material in surface contexts informs about the periods in which activities took place, because the general sequence of pottery development is quite well researched, so that at the very least a general date can usually be proposed. This is not to say that no more advances and refinement can be achieved or that new research is superfluous in the light of advances in research method and technology. The practice of dating by parallels from other sites is to a certain extent problematic especially in transitional periods because an absolutely uniform time horizon for certain pottery types seems to be the exception rather than the rule as well as total conformity in technology as well as in typology.

The paper focusses on methodology in processing, data collection and ways to tease out information of the smallest pieces of pottery including material from drill cores. Last but not least the controversial topic of discarding material will also be discussed.

by Fabiana FABBRI, in Res Antiquae 15, 2018.

The production area of the kilns of Vingone, situated in the borough of Scandicci, south-west of the city of Florence in Tuscany was discovered in 1980 during excavation works on a large building site, and brought to light by the Soprintendenza ai Beni Archeologici della Toscana. As well as the remains of various kilns, the finds included a considerable amount of pottery and bricks ; the excavation has been published in E. J. Shepherd, G. Capecchi, G. de Marinis, A. Patera, (ed.), Le fornaci del Vingone a Scandicci. Un impianto produttivo di età romana nella valle dell’Arno (Rassegna di Archeologia 22b), 2006, Firenze. The aim of this study is to point out a particular set of pottery intended to be used for cultual purpose.

Keywords: Roman pottery kilns, Roman Northern Tuscany,  worshipping pottery
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L'Incoronata (Italy) is an important proto-archaic key-site where Indigenous South-Italian communities met the first Aegean migrants, between the 8th and the 7th century BC. This hill housed an important craft area at least during the 7th century BC.
The structures we still unearth are characterized by the association of both Indigenous and locally produced Greek pottery, within the same stratigraphic contexts. It allows us to observe a "middle ground" between these two craftspeople communities. Sometimes, attributing a sherd to one production or another seems impossible, or at least irrelevant.
Here we will talk about the issues of "mixity", hybridity and identity, and about the sharing of areas, know-how and technical skills through a critical overview of the various ceramic productions and craft structures. These themes will be discussed with some methodological perspectives, under different prisms as many as archaeological, technological, archaeometrical or ethnoarchaeological.

While setting up for the 2007 season of the OINE in the Fourth Cataract at Kareima, we encountered a workshop for making zirs in the groves near the Nile.  Discussed in print elsewhere, it was a valuable chance to view the stages of pottery manufacture in a traditional setting, although no one was present to discuss the details.

During the late 60s and early 70s the remains of 44 medieval pottery (and tile) kilns were exposed during house-building at Heath End on the west side of the town of Nuneaton, in north Warwickshire, England. The discoveries are commonly referred to as the ‘Chilvers Coton medieval pottery industry’.  A report appeared as a Medieval Archaeology monograph in 1984, authored by Philip Mayes and Keith Scott, each of whom directed various excavations. Notably, their research pioneered a fabric type series supported by state-of-the-art scientific analytical techniques, viz., thin section petrological analysis and neutron activation analysis. The report contains an extensive illustrated corpus of vessel types, together with a chronology of kiln forms. The work remains one of the most valuable points of reference for the study of the production of medieval ceramics in the West Midlands.

But how extensive was the Chilvers Coton medieval pottery industry? Despite a lengthy documentary study which shows how the kiln sites fitted into a broader picture of medieval and post-medieval clay-working in the wider Nuneaton area, there was little attempt to explore the localised historical occurrence of the kiln sites at Heath End. The possible significance of a medieval manorial context was implied: all of the kilns were believed to have occurred in the ancient manor of Griff and Coton. But the manorial bounds are nowhere shown, and there was no attempt to advance this line of thought.  A plan showing the chronological-spatial distribution of kiln sites would have been very useful in this respect. The report shows only the distribution of excavated areas super-imposed on the (developing) urban area as it then appeared in the early 1970s, a district which has since witnessed great change over the past four and a half decades.  Comprehension of the medieval landscape context of the ‘industry’ was thus left vague; the county Historic Environment Record cautiously paints the geographical extent of the industry with a broad brush, casting a canvas well beyond the evidence of medieval kiln sites. 

The aim of this paper (in Medieval Ceramics vol. 36, 2015) has therefore been to augment the work of Dr. Mayes and Mr Scott, two archaeologists for whom I have great respect (I had the privilege to work alongside Mr Scott on several excavations in north Warwickshire). The paper closely examines the spatial distribution of the medieval kiln sites with respect to ancient manorial boundaries and to their geological disposition. It examines evidence of land ownership and land use, and casts new light on the possible origins of the industry and its context and spatial extent within the medieval landscape. It considers, for the first time, the archaeological evidence of pottery production at Chilvers Coton in the light of revised ceramic dates.

La publication des actes du colloque international Archéologie des espaces artisanaux. Fouiller et comprendre les gestes des potiers (Rennes, 27-28 novembre 2014) a pour objectif de réunir une série de contributions scientifiques portant sur les problématiques et les méthodologies de la fouille des espaces de production de le céramique. Elle s'inscrit en continuité des colloques organisés par le laboratoire LAHM (Université Rennes 2, UMR 6566) dans un cadre épistémologique abordant les méthodologies de la recherche archéologique : La céramique dans les contextes rituels. Fouiller et comprendre les gestes des Anciens (dir. M. Denti et M. Tuffreau-Libre, PUR 2013) et La céramique dans les espaces archéologiques « mixtes » autour de la Méditerranée antique (dir. M. Denti et C. Bellamy, PUR 2016). La compréhension des modes de production et de l'organisation des espaces de la production artisanale dans les sociétés antiques représente l'une des problématiques au coeur de la recherche archéologique actuelle. La nature particulièrement fragile de ce type de vestiges (fours, portions de fours, plans de piétinement et de travail, fosses d'extraction de l'argile, bassins de dépuration, rejets de cuisson, instruments lithiques et osseux) invite à nous interroger sur les méthodes à employer pour essayer de restituer les gestes, les intentions et le savoir-faire des potiers. La situation qui caractérise actuellement cet horizon de la recherche nous montre que des méthodes ponctuelles, des protocoles spécifiques, une logique « scientifique » propre au traitement de ces contextes et de ce type de mobi-lier, en réalité, n'existent pas. La question centrale a été donc celle de discuter et de comparer les manières à travers lesquelles nous abordons les opérations de fouille de ces contextes et, avant même, la manière à travers laquelle nous pensons les objets et les structures que nous y rencontrons. Ce colloque a voulu poser les bases d'une réflexion autour des méthodes propres aux investigations archéologiques actuellement menées sur les espaces de production de la céramique, en embrassant une chronologie allant de l'âge du Fer à la période romaine et un espace géographique comprenant la Méditerranée et l'Europe atlantique. Mario Denti, dans l'introduction, fait un état des problématiques sur le plan heuristique et méthodologique. Francine Blondé, dans les conclusions, trace les lignes du chemin parcouru et discute les perspectives de recherche qui s'offrent devant nous.

Les productions céramiques protohistoriques de l'aire mégalithique sénégambienne dans le contexte de l'Afrique de l'Ouest aux I er et II e millénaires de notre ère (Protohistoric pottery productions from the Senegambian megalithic area in the context of West Africa during the first and second millennia AD)

The purpose of this paper is to cast light onhowthe red glossy slipped
pottery of the Urartian Kingdom (9th–6th century BC) was
manufactured. Ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology,
as well as more traditional archaeological research methods, are
used to discern the processes involved. First, the pottery was
categorized based on surface treatment. Next, ethnoarchaeological
research was carried out in the village of Bardakçı in the province
of Van (Eastern Turkey) to gain a more detailed understanding of
ancient ceramic production techniques. This approach and
subsequent experiments provided important insights into the
technology that was used during the production of ancient
Urartian pottery. The findings of the ethnoarchaeological work
indicate that the practices of modern potters living in villages near
Urartian settlements are similar, in terms of materials and methods,
to the practices of the past.