Technology firing temperature, pottery

Among the technologies in existence by ca 4000 bc, which included the manufacture of synthetic lapis lazuli, the development of the first true pottery kilns must rate as a significant achievement (1). For polychrome pottery to be successfully manufactured, it was essential to separate the fire (fuel) from the work (clay pottery). The excavations performed in the near east (Mesopotamia in antiquity) indicate that these early kilns were probably of beehive construction. Subsequent Egyptian pottery kilns of the period ca 3000 BC were the familiar chimney shape. With the smelting of copper in pit hearths predating by perhaps a millenium millennium the start of the Bronze Age at ca 3000 BC, another important advance was the invention of the bellows at ca 2000 BC. Bellows supply combustion air where it is needed and are used as a means of raising furnace temperature. 

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