Modern pottery

Comparison of Modern Pottery with Its Known Clay Source. The... 

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.

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... 

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... 

The discovery of the use of fire was the first great step leading toward modern chemistry. Fire made it possible to turn raw foodstuffs into edible meals, to bake shaped clay into pottery, to make glass, to drive metals out of their ores. 

Ceramics Materials such as pottery made from inorganic chemicals by high-temperature processing. Other modern ceramics include zirconium oxide and silicon nitride. 

Mankind has used copper throughoutrecorded history. People learned to refine it from copper ore near 5000 BC. It was used for pottery, tools, coins and jewelry. Because ofits softness, Cu was no t useful for weapons and tools until itwas hardened by alloying it with other metals brass is Cu and zinc bronze is Cu and tin. Modern alloys are copper-aluminum and copper-nickel. Copper is one of the best conductors of electricity, so that it is widely used commercially for wiring. Its resistance to tarnishing by oxidation makes it a popular but expensive roofing material. 

In addition to the archaeological material, majolica sherds were obtained from two modern factories in Puebla La Trinidad and Santa Maria. Both of these potteries use a clay body blended from a mixture of equal amounts of a black volcanic clay and a white marl obtained from the immediate area around Puebla (4), Samples from these sherds were analyzed by neutron activation analysis and the data used to represent a Puebla composition. 

Treatment of the Raw Materials. Based on the field expedition to Mexico in 1981 and the subsequent mineralogical and chemical analyses of the collected clays and modern majolica, much more can be worked out on the technique of ancient Mexican majolica production. The low calcium content of the Valle Ware specimens points to the use of a noncalcareous clay. The observed mineralogical matching of these specimens with modern black clays from Puebla (SD 47 and SD 48) and ancient Pre-Columbian pottery (I-l, 1-2, SC 98, SC 99) suggests that these objects have been made from the locally available common red-burning volcanic clays, which were used extensively in Pre-Columbian time. There is no further evidence from microscopic inspection that supplementary addition of another material took place. These clays were therefore used, possibly after a sieving, as they have been found. 

Although metals such as copper, iron, and tin began coming of age at the same time as clay pottery, it is only in more modern times that they began to play a unique role in packaging. In many cases, metal containers proved to be stronger and far more durable than other materials. ... 

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