Pottery dating

Ancient Roman aqueducts made with clay pipes are well known. However, archaeologists have recovered a Roman child s toilet chair made of pottery dating back to the sixth cenmry b.c.e. It is presently in the British Museum in London. 

Pottery is one of the oldest materials. Clay artefacts as old as the pyramids (5000 bc) are sophisticated in their manufacture and glazing and shards of pottery of much earlier date are known. Then, as now, the clay was mined from sites where weathering had deposited them, hydroplastieally formed, fired and then glazed. 

Cuello was excavated by Hammond and co-workers between 1975 and 1993. It is the earliest known Preclassic Maya site, with a Preclassic occupation from ca. 1200 BC to AD 300 as well as later Classic period (AD 300-900) remains the earliest pottery-using phase (Swasey, 1200-900 BC) has not yet been found at other Preclassic sites, but the Bladen (900-600 BC) and subsequent phases match occupations elsewhere in date and material culture. The Cuello excavations have been extensively described in the report edited by Hammond (1991). Of particular relevance here are the chapters on the ecology and subsistence economy (Ch. 4) by Miksicek and by Wing and Scudder, and on the human burials (Ch. 7), by Frank and Julie Saul. More recent publications have focused on the subsistence economy (Crane and Carr 1994) and on the human skeletal remains (Saul and Saul 1997). 

Stott, A. W., R. Berstan, R. P. Evershed, C. Bronk-Ramsey, M. Humm, and R. E. M. Hedges (2003), Direct dating of archaeological pottery by compound specific C-14 analysis of preserved lipids, Anal. Chem. 75(19), 5037-5045. 

Mottram H.R., Dudd S.N., Lawrence G.J., Stott A.W., Evershed R.P., New chromato graphic, mass spectrometry and stable isotope approaches to the classification of degra dated animal fats preserved in archaeological pottery, Journal of Chromatography, 1999, 833, 209 221. 

This proxy approach has recently been used to provide the earliest evidence for prehistoric milk use (Evershed et cd. 2008). A study of the lipid content of >2200 pottery vessels from sites in the Near East and the Balkans dating from the fifth to seventh millennia was carried out. It was shown that milk was in use by the seventh millennium... 

Bollong, C.A., Vogel, J.C., Jacobson, L., van der Westhuizen, W.A. and Sampson, C.G. (1993). Direct dating and identity of fibre temper in precontact Bushman (Basarwa) pottery. Journal of Archaeological Science 20 41-55. 

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