Ancient pottery

The simplest and coarsest type of pottery is a lightweight, very porous, and typically red-colored terracotta that is fired at temperatures below 850°C. Much of ancient pottery, for example, is of the terracotta type. Excavations in the Near East have revealed that primitive terracotta vessels were being made there more than 8000 years ago characteristic types of terracotta were developed in China by about 5000 b.c. 

TABLE 61 Techniques Used for Studying the Firing Conditions of Ancient Pottery... 

Tite, M. S. and Y. Maniatis (1975), Examination of ancient pottery using the scanning electron microscope, Nature 257, 122-123. 

Warashina, T., T. Higashimura, and Y. Maeda (1981), Determination of the firing temperature of ancient pottery by means esr spectrometry, British Museum Occasional Papers, 19,117-123. 

S. Charters, R. P. Evershed, A. Quye, P. W. Blinkhom and V. Reeves, Simulation experiments for determining the use of ancient pottery vessels the behaviour of epicuticular leaf wax during boiling of a leafy vegetable, J. Archaeol. Sci., 27, 1 27 (1997). 

Heimann, R.B. (1989). Assessing the technology of ancient pottery the use of ceramic phase diagrams. Archeomaterials 3 123-148. 

There Is something strangely suggestive in the relies of ancient pottery-kilns that still linger on the scene of their former active operations. The modern Staffordshire potter has derived do heritage from his Roman predecessor. Thera had been no continuity of work. Centnries of disuse had obliterated the very memory... 

The surfaces of ancient pottery were often decorated with a ferruginous slip that could be intentionally fired to a red or a black color. The color change was the result of not only kiln atmosphere and temperature, but at times also of the degree of vitrification of the slip. Color variations in both the painted decoration and in the clay body of sherds from one archaeological site and time are shown in Figure 6. This series of sherds was excavated at Tell Halaf in northeastern Syria and comes from pottery... 

Amiran, R., Ancient Pottery of the Holy Land, Masada Press, Jerusalem, 1969. Lapp, P. W., The Pottery of Palestine in the Persian Period in Archaologie und Alles Testament, A. Kuschke and E. Kutsch, Eds., pp. 179-197, J. C. B. Mohr, Tubingen, 1970. 

From the correlation between the ancient pottery and modern clay one can draw several significant conclusions in addition to the most immediately obvious one that the matching ancient pots were locally made. The amount of temper in the ancient pottery, as evidenced by our comparison with the clay source, has not diluted or otherwise significantly altered the compositional pattern of the ceramic. Also the pottery must not have significantly changed in composition during burial. In addition we observed a small but significant difference between the composition... 

Figure 6. Comparison of the concentrations of many oxides in ancient pottery and in modern pottery and clays from Teotihuacan. Average concentrations (—) and 95% confidence ranges ( ) of 23 ancient sherds. Average concentrations (%) in two modem pottery plus two clay specimens.

Figure 7. Comparison of the concentrations of many oxides in ancient pottery and in modern pottery and clays from Oaxaca. See Figure 6 for legend.

Table VII. Comparison of Concentration Means and Group Standard Deviations of Compositional Groups of Ancient Pottery Specimens...

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