Pottery making

The generic name used to refer to ceramic objects shaped from a wet mixture of clay and fillers that is then dried and subsequently fired at high temperatures is pottery. Making pottery involves a number of working stages ... 

One of the earliest uses of fire was in pottery making. Early humans undoubtedly observed that when clay was heated its water was driven out and a hard rock substance remained. Our ancestors made clay implements and art fixtures by heating their work in open pit fires, and clay implements from 20,000 years ago have been found. 

Any given analyzed sample of pottery is a small subset of a larger ceramic system. Pottery is formed from clays and nonplastic constituents according to shared customs of the local pottery-making group as well as idiosyncratic or stochastic effects. The compositional profile that is derived from the chemical analysis of a ceramic sample, therefore, is a weighted expression of both natural and cultural constraints. 

Pottery as source material has some assets, one of which is the ancient potters knowledge of which clays in an area were (and are) best for pottery making. If we were to search for these clays, we would be faced with a tedious, and largely blind, sampling. In addition, it is often unpractical or even impossible to mount clay-collection expeditious to distant places in which one is interested. 

By 6400 BCE, pottery making was a well-developed craft. Subsequent developments in the history of ceramics are shown in Figure 2.4. We will be describing some of these in a little more detail in later sections of this chapter. 

A turntable used for checking the symmetry of a model in pottery making, or for the hand-making of a saggar (q.v.). 

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