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Within a very short time there have been remarkable changes in the practice of ceramic analysis in the United States. Al­though technical changes such as the growing use of quantitative methods are widespread, of perhaps more importance is an array of propositions that deals with the cultural causes of ceramic vari­ation, and it provides the focus of this book. The first section of the book, with chapters by Graves, Kintigh, Washburn and Matson, Brunson, and Braun, is fo­cused on "ceramic sociology." The pa­pers by Stark and Feinman in the second part treat the organization of ceramic production. The third part, with papers by Froese, Plog, Smith, and Nelson, is concerned with problems of measure­ment and classification in an effort to understand the systematic role of pottery In part four, entitled "Further Lessons from Ethnoarchaeology," Loungacre, DeBoer, and Hardin continue the use of ethnoarchaeological observations established in earlier chapters to provide us with fresh prospects for understanding ceramics through ethnoarchaeology.
Plog argues that there are many more factors that cause design or stylistic variations on prehistoric artifacts than have been previously acknowledged. Using data primarily from the American Southwest, he shows why the methods of design analysis that have been used are often inappropriate, and presents a new framework of explanation.
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.
Throughout prehistory the Circumpolar World was inhabited by hunter-gatherers. Pottery-making would have been extremely difficult in these cold, northern environments, and the craft should never have been able to disperse into this region. However, archaeologists are now aware that pottery traditions were adopted widely across the Northern World and went on to play a key role in subsistence and social life. This book sheds light on the human motivations that lay behind the adoption of pottery, the challenges that had to be overcome in order to produce it, and the solutions that emerged. Including essays by an international team of scholars, the volume offers a compelling portrait of the role that pottery cooking technologies played in northern lifeways, both in the prehistoric past and in more recent ethnographic times.
For decades archaeologists have used pottery to reconstruct the lifeways of ancient populations. It has become increasingly evident, however, that to make inferences about prehistoric economic, social, and political activities through the patterning of ceramic variation, it is necessary to determine the location where the vessels were made. Through detailed analysis of manufacturing technology and design styles as well as the use of modern analytical techniques such as neutron activation analysis, Zede–o here demonstrates a broadly applicable methodology for identifying local and nonlocal ceramics.
The first general handbook and reference guide for the study of British prehistoric pottery has now been revised and updated for a second edition. The work contains a thorough survey of the chronological development of pottery throughout prehistory and into the Roman period, as well as chapters on the development of pottery studies (from both typological and scientific viewpoints) and on the materials and methods used for the manufacture of pottery. The main part of the book is an extensively illustrated glossary in which pottery styles and types, materials and technology are explained in detail. Much of the data contained has been yielded by the authors' personal research projects, including microscopy and experimental studies and fieldwork with contemporary traditional potters.
This volume draws together topics and methodologies essential for the socio-cultural, mineralogical, and geochemical analysis of archaeological ceramic, one of the most complex and ubiquitous archaeomaterials in the archaeological record. It provides an invaluable resource for archaeologists, anthropologists, and archaeological materials scientists.
A user-friendly guide to the identification and classification of the many types of pottery created by prehistoric peoples of the Southwest.
The people behind the pots' are never far away from these thirteen papers which cover many aspects of the use and manufacture of prehistoric pottery. The papers, which are all in English, form the proceedings of a conference jointly organised by the Prehistoric Ceramics Research Group and the Ceramics Petrology Group, held in Bradford in 2002.