This book examines how Romans used their pottery and the implications of these practices on the archaeological record. It is organized around a flow model for the life cycle of Roman pottery that ...includes a set of eight distinct practices: manufacture, distribution, prime use, reuse, maintenance, recycling, discard, reclamation. J. Theodore Peña evaluates how these practices operated, how they have shaped the archaeological record, and the implications of these processes on archaeological research through the examination of a wide array of archaeological, textual, representational and comparative ethnographic evidence. The result is a rich portrayal of the dynamic that shaped the archaeological record of the ancient Romans that will be of interest to archaeologists, ceramicists, and students of material culture.
NAMED A BEST NEW POTTERY BOOK TO READ IN 2022 BY THE
BOOK AUTHORITY Lavishly illustrated with over
250 full-color photographs of unique designs and rare methods,
providing an in-depth look at the ...pottery produced in the
Fayoum The Fayoum, a broad, fertile depression in Egypt's
Western Desert, known for its great salt lake, its rich green
fields, and its unique pharaonic and Greco-Roman remains, is also
home to three very different centers of pottery production. The
potters of Kom Oshim specialize in decorated garden pots and other
utilitarian ware, and guard the special secret of how to make the
largest clay vessels in Egypt, up to an extraordinary two and a
half meters tall. At al-Nazla, ancient traditions are kept alive,
as members of a single extended family continue to use
millennia-old techniques passed down from generation to generation,
hand-forming among other things their distinctive spherical water
jars with amazing dexterity and speed. In the small village of
Tunis, the establishment of a pottery school by a Swiss couple in
1990 led to a complete transformation, and the village now hosts
more than twenty-five pottery workshops and showrooms, whose
products are sold in Cairo, London, and New York. In this lively
insight into a varied and vital craft, the author reveals the
stories of the three villages and the skilled potters who make
their living there, looking at how they learned their trade and how
they work, from the preparation of the clay to the formation of the
pots on the wheel or by hand, to the decoration, the glazing, and
the firing, and finally to the display or distribution and sale of
the finished product. For past and future travelers to Egypt,
lovers of the craft of pottery, practitioners, and collectors, this
beautifully illustrated exploration of the ceramics of the Fayoum
will inspire and enchant.
William Moorcroft (1872-1945) was one of the most celebrated potters of the early twentieth century. His career extended from the Arts and Crafts movement of the late Victorian age to the Austerity ...aesthetics of the Second World War. Rejecting mass production and patronised by Royalty, Moorcroft’s work was a synthesis of studio and factory, art and industry. He considered it his vocation to create an everyday art, both functional and decorative, affordable by more than a privileged few: ‘If only the people in the world would concentrate upon making all things beautiful, and if all people concentrated on developing the arts of Peace, what a world it might be,’ he wrote in a letter to his daughter in 1930. 'William Moorcroft, Potter: Individuality by Design' is a pioneering study by Jonathan Mallinson, Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. It follows the career of William Moorcroft through a wealth of private papers, letters and diaries, business correspondence and published reviews in newspapers, trade magazines and art journals. Richly illustrated with examples of his pottery, it explores what lay behind the unique impact of work sought by museums and treasured in homes the world over. The book examines an artist’s very individual response to the turbulent half century in which he worked. It will appeal to both specialists and general readers with an interest in pottery, the decorative arts, and the cultural history of the times.
Early Pottery Saunders, Rebecca; Hays, Christopher T; Weinstein, Richard A ...
2004
eBook
A synthesis of research on earthenware technologies of the Late Archaic Period in the southeastern U.S. Information on social groups and boundaries, and on interaction between groups, burgeons when ...pottery appears on the social landscape of the Southeast in the Late Archaic period (ca. 5000-3000 years ago). This volume provides a broad, comparative review of current data from "first potteries" of the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains and in the lower Mississippi River Valley, and it presents research that expands our understanding of how pottery functioned in its earliest manifestations in this region. Included are discussions of Orange pottery in peninsular Florida, Stallings pottery in Georgia, Elliot's Point fiber-tempered pottery in the Florida panhandle, and the various pottery types found in excavations over the years at the Poverty Point site in northeastern Louisiana. The data and discussions demonstrate that there was much more interaction, and at an earlier date, than is often credited to Late Archaic societies. Indeed, extensive trade in pottery throughout the region occurs as early as 1500 B.C. These and other findings make this book indispensable to those involved in research into the origin and development of pottery in general and its unique history in the Southeast in particular.
Bright red terra sigillata pots dating to the first three centuries CE can be found throughout the Western Roman provinces. The pots' widespread distribution and recognisability make them key ...evidence in the effort to reconstruct the Roman Empire's economy and society. Drawing on recent ideas in material culture, this book asks a radically new question: what was it about the pots themselves that allowed them to travel so widely and be integrated so quickly into a range of contexts and practices? To answer this question, Van Oyen offers a fresh analysis in which objects are no longer passive props, but rather they actively shape historical trajectories.
Daniel Albero Santacreu presents a wide overview of certain aspects of the pottery analysis and summarizes most of the methodological and theoretical information currently applied in archaeology in ...order to develop wide and deep analysis of ceramic pastes. The book provides an adequate framework for understanding the way pottery production is organised and clarifies the meaning and role of the pottery in archaeological and traditional societies. The goal of this book is to encourage reflection, especially by those researchers who face the analysis of ceramics for the first time, by providing a background for the generation of their own research and to formulate their own questions depending on their concerns and interests. The three-part structure of the book allows readers to move easily from the analysis of the reality and ceramic material culture to the world of the ideas and theories and to develop a dialogue between data and their interpretation. Daniel Albero Santacreu is a Lecturer Assistant in the University of the Balearic Islands, member of the Research Group Arqueo UIB and the Ceramic Petrology Group. He has carried out the analysis of ceramics from several prehistoric societies placed in the Western Mediterranean, as well as the study of handmade pottery from contemporary ethnic groups in Northeast Ghana.
How and why do ceramics and their production change through time? Social Change and the Evolution of Ceramic Production and Distribution in a Maya Community is a unique ethno-archaeological study ...that attempts to answer these questions by tracing social change among potters and changes in the production and distribution of their pottery in a single Mexican community between 1965 and 1997. Dean E. Arnold made ten visits to Ticul, Yucatan, Mexico, witnessing the changes in transportation infrastructure, the use of piped water, and the development of tourist resorts. Even in this context of social change and changes in the demand for pottery, most of the potters in 1997 came from the families that had made pottery in 1965. This book traces changes and continuities in that population of potters, in the demand and distribution of pottery, and in the procurement of clay and temper, paste composition, forming, and firing. In this volume, Arnold bridges the gap between archaeology and ethnography, using his analysis of contemporary ceramic production and distribution to generate new theoretical explanations for archaeologists working with pottery from antiquity. When the descriptions and explanations of Arnold's findings in Ticul are placed in the context of the literature on craft specialization, a number of insights can be applied to the archaeological record that confirm, contradict, and nuance generalizations concerning the evolution of ceramic specialization. This book will be of special interest to anthropologists, archaeologists, and ethnographers.
A lucrative trade in Athenian pottery flourished from the early sixth until the late fifth century B.C.E., finding an eager market in Etruria. Most studies of these painted vases focus on the ...artistry and worldview of the Greeks who made them, but Sheramy D. Bundrick shifts attention to their Etruscan customers, ancient trade networks, and archaeological contexts.
Thousands of Greek painted vases have emerged from excavations of tombs, sanctuaries, and settlements throughout Etruria, from southern coastal centers to northern communities in the Po Valley. Using documented archaeological assemblages, especially from tombs in southern Etruria, Bundrick challenges the widely held assumption that Etruscans were hellenized through Greek imports. She marshals evidence to show that Etruscan consumers purposefully selected figured pottery that harmonized with their own local needs and customs, so much so that the vases are better described as etruscanized. Athenian ceramic workers, she contends, learned from traders which shapes and imagery sold best to the Etruscans and employed a variety of strategies to maximize artistry, output, and profit.
PDF
