Approaches To Archaeological Ceramics

More than any other category of evidence, ceramics ofters archaeologists their most abundant and potentially enlightening source of information on the past. Being made primarily of day, a relatively inexpensive material that is available in every region, ceramics became essential in virtually every society in the world during the past ten thousand years. The straightfor ward technology of preparing, forming, and firing day into hard, durable shapes has meant that societies at various levels of complexity have come to rely on it for a wide variety of tasks. Ceramic vessels quickly became essential for many household and productive tasks. Food preparation, cooking, and storage-the very basis of settled village life-could not exist as we know them without the use of ceramic vessels. Often these vessels broke into pieces, but the virtually indestructible quality of the ceramic material itself meant that these pieces would be preserved for centuries, waiting to be recovered by modem archaeologists. The ability to create ceramic material with diverse physical properties, to form vessels into so many different shapes, and to decorate them in limitless manners, led to their use in far more than utilitarian contexts. Some vessels were especially made to be used in trade, manufacturing activities, or rituals, while ceramic material was also used to make other items such as figurines, models, and architectural ornaments.

The Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Ceramic Analysis draws together topics and methodologies essential for the socio-cultural, mineralogical, and geochemical analysis of archaeological ceramic. Ceramic is one of the most complex and ubiquitous archaeomaterials in the archaeological record: it occurs around the world and through time in almost every culture and context, from building materials and technological installations to utilitarian wares and votive figurines. For more than 100 years, archaeologists have used ceramic analysis to answer complex questions about economy, subsistence, technological innovation, social organization, and dating. The volume is structured around the themes 'Research design and data analysis', 'Foundational concepts', 'Evaluating ceramic provenance', 'Investigating ceramic manufacture', 'Assessing vessel function', and 'Dating ceramic assemblages'. It provides a common vocabulary and offers practical tools and guidelines for ceramic analysis using techniques and methodologies ranging from network analysis and typology to rehydroxylation dating and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Each chapter provides the theoretical background and practical guidelines, such as cost and destructiveness of analysis, for each technique, as well as detailed case studies illustrating the application and interpretation of analytical data for answering anthropological questions.

Pottery is the most ubiquitous find in most historical archaeological excavations and serves as the basis for much research in the discipline. But it is not only its frequency that makes it a prime dataset for such research, it is also that pottery embeds many dimensions of the human experience, ranging from the purely technical to the eminently symbolic. The aim of this book is to provide a cutting-edge theoretical and methodological framework, as well as a practical guide, for archaeologists, students and researchers to study ceramic assemblages. As opposed to the conventional typological approach, which focuses on vessel shape and assumed function with the main goal of establishing a chronological sequence, the proposed framework is based on the technological approach. Such an approach utilizes the concept of chaîne opératoire, which is geared to an anthropological interpretation of archaeological objects. The author offers a sound theoretical background accompanied by an original research strategy whose presentation is at the heart of this book. This research strategy is presented in successive chapters that are geared to explain not only how to study archaeological assemblages, but also why the proposed methods are essential for achieving ambitious interpretive goals. In the heated debate on the equation stating that “pots equal people”, which is a rather fuzzy reference to assumed relationships between (mostly) ethnic groups and pottery, technology enables us to propose with conviction the equation “pots equal potters”. In this way, a well-founded history of potters is able to achieve a much better cultural and anthropological understanding of ancient societies.​

More than any other category of evidence, ceramics ofters archaeologists their most abundant and potentially enlightening source of information on the past. Being made primarily of day, a relatively inexpensive material that is available in every region, ceramics became essential in virtually every society in the world during the past ten thousand years. The straightfor ward technology of preparing, forming, and firing day into hard, durable shapes has meant that societies at various levels of complexity have come to rely on it for a wide variety of tasks. Ceramic vessels quickly became essential for many household and productive tasks. Food preparation, cooking, and storage-the very basis of settled village life-could not exist as we know them without the use of ceramic vessels. Often these vessels broke into pieces, but the virtually indestructible quality of the ceramic material itself meant that these pieces would be preserved for centuries, waiting to be recovered by modem archaeologists. The ability to create ceramic material with diverse physical properties, to form vessels into so many different shapes, and to decorate them in limitless manners, led to their use in far more than utilitarian contexts. Some vessels were especially made to be used in trade, manufacturing activities, or rituals, while ceramic material was also used to make other items such as figurines, models, and architectural ornaments.

Daniel Albero Santacreu presents a wide overview of certain aspects of the pottery analysis and summarizes most of the methodological and theoretical information currently applied in archaeology in order to develop wide and deep analysis of ceramic pastes. The book provides an adequate framework for understanding the way pottery production is organised and clarifies the meaning and role of the pottery in archaeological and traditional societies. The goal of this book is to encourage reflection, especially by those researchers who face the analysis of ceramics for the first time, by providing a background for the generation of their own research and to formulate their own questions depending on their concerns and interests. The three-part structure of the book allows readers to move easily from the analysis of the reality and ceramic material culture to the world of the ideas and theories and to develop a dialogue between data and their interpretation. Daniel Albero Santacreu is a Lecturer Assistant in the University of the Balearic Islands, member of the Research Group Arqueo UIB and the Ceramic Petrology Group. He has carried out the analysis of ceramics from several prehistoric societies placed in the Western Mediterranean, as well as the study of handmade pottery from contemporary ethnic groups in Northeast Ghana.

This volume presents a range of petrographic case studies as applied to archaeological problems, primarily in the field of pottery analysis, i.e. ceramic petrography.

This is an up-to-date account of the different kinds of information that can be obtained through the archaeological study of pottery.

This revised edition provides an up-to-date account of the many different kinds of information that can be obtained through the archaeological study of pottery. It describes the scientific and quantitative techniques that are now available to the archaeologist, and assesses their value for answering a range of archaeological questions. It provides a manual for the basic handling and archiving of excavated pottery so that it can be used as a basis for further studies. The whole is set in the historical context of the ways in which archaeologists have sought to gain evidence from pottery and continue to do so. There are case studies of several approaches and techniques, backed up by an extensive bibliography.

A 'state of the art' guide to pottery analysis providing information on recent scientific developments and the latest statistical techniques.

This is the first volume to bring together archaeology, anthropology, and art history in the analysis of pre-Columbian pottery. While previous research on ceramic artifacts has been divided by these three disciplines, this volume shows how integrating these approaches provides new understandings of many different aspects of Ancient American societies. Contributors from a variety of backgrounds in these fields explore what ceramics can reveal about ancient social dynamics, trade, ritual, politics, innovation, iconography, and regional styles. Essays identify supernatural and humanistic beliefs through formal analysis of Lower Mississippi Valley "Great Serpent" effigy vessels and Ecuadorian depictions of the human figure. They discuss the cultural identity conveyed by imagery such as Andean head motifs, and they analyze symmetry in designs from locations including the American Southwest. Chapters also take diachronic approaches—methods that track change over time—to ceramics from Mexico’s Tarascan State and the Valley of Oaxaca, as well as from Maya and Toltec societies. This volume provides a much-needed multidisciplinary synthesis of current scholarship on Ancient American ceramics. It is a model of how different research perspectives can together illuminate the relationship between these material artifacts and their broader human culture. Contributors: | Dean Arnold | George J. Bey III | Michael Carrasco | David Dye | James Farmer | Gary Feinman | Amy Hirshman | Yumi Park Huntington | Johanna Minich | Shelia Pozorski and Thomas Pozorski | Jeff Price | Sarahh Scher | Dorothy Washburn | Robert F. Wald