Orientation Patterns Characteristic for the Structure of the Ceramic Body of Wheel-thrown Pottery

The described analysis follows recent findings related to the orientation of particles and voids in a ceramic body that is characteristic for wheel-made pottery. The analysis is focused on the potential variability within wheel-throwing method and is based on an experimental collection that combines the factors of the experience and motor habits of individual potters and the vessel shape. The orientation of the components of a ceramic body is calculated for two sections: radial and tangential. The sections are analysed using optical microscopy. The calculated orientation and alignment reflect the throwing style of potters using the same forming method.

Identifying Wheel-Thrown Vases in Middle Minoan Crete? Preliminary Analysis of Experimental Replicas of Plain Handleless Conical Cups from Protopalatial Phaistos

Recent work in Middle Bronze Age Crete has revealed that most Protopalatial or First Palace period pottery is produced through the use of a combination of coil-building and the wheel, i.e., wheelcoiling. Experimental work conducted on pottery from Minoan sites of Northern and Eastern Crete (e.g., Knossos, Myrtos Pyrgos, Palaikastro) has indeed determined that Minoan potters did not develop the skills required to adopt the wheel-throwing technique. However, my recent technological study of Protopalatial ceramic material from Middle Minoan IIA (19th century BC) deposits from the First Palace at Phaistos, in Southern Crete, has revealed that though pottery was produced by the wheelcoiling techniques, yet other forming techniques were practised too. In this paper I present a preliminary analysis of experimental replicas of MM IIA Phaistian plain handleless conical cups, manufactured on the potter’s wheel using three different forming techniques: wheel-pinching, wheel-coiling, and throwing-off-the-hump. This analysis will proffer answers to several questions on the use of the potter’s wheel in Middle Bronze Age Crete and opens the possibility that at MM IIA Phaistos there co-existed potters who had developed skills to employ different forming techniques on the wheel, including possibly that of throwing-off-the-hump.

Generalised Typesets in Experimental Ceramics: Widening Applicability and Maximizing Cross-cultural Assessments

Investigations tackling the production techniques used by ancient potters often rely upon experimental archaeology to clarify the relationship between surface morphology, surface topography, and the techniques, methods, and gestures used in the potting process. These experimental archaeology programmes focus on creating collections of experimental vessels to compare against archaeologicallyrecovered vessels, thus allowing production techniques to be identified. Often times, however, the typesets generated are designed to address a specific intersection of qualities; replica vessels adhere to a tight range of shapes, dimensions, paste recipes, and/or forming techniques. As such, the applicability of those typesets remains narrow and context-specific. How, then, can researchers tackle assemblages with diverse vessel types? Or contexts composed of competing potting traditions? Or contexts with significant proportions of vessels from many different origins? This paper presents a new approach to the way that experimental typesets are designed, developed specifically to address the problem of reliably identifying forming techniques across multiple assemblages. By focusing on accommodating common geometric possibilities of vessel shapes, a generalised typeset can allow individuals to make use of well-documented experimental data. The typeset for the Tracing the Potter’s Wheel project was designed for broad applicability, and has been made freely accessible as a reference collection. Through the creation of and comparison against a generalised typeset, heterogeneous assemblages can be better understood and resources can be directed toward answering specific questions. This paper presents the theoretical foundations supporting the concept of a generalised typeset, as well as the practice of using a generalised typeset for analysis.

A Return to the Wheel: Rethinking Experimental Methodologies for the Study of the Potter’s Wheel

Research into the study of wheel-making techniques has grown, but studies of the tool or the wheel and its properties have remained understudied or considered insignificant until recently. In order to develop this research, the wheel and its practicalities, such as the physics, should be incorporated more into research of making techniques. Through the application of chaîne opératoire and experimental archaeology, this research questioned whether different wheel types produce different macroscopic traces on pots produced by the same technique. There are several results presented here that can shed light on the way archaeologists should investigate and understand early wheel potting, in particular the physics of rotation, which has received minimal attention as a result of a predominance for researching techniques over the tool (the wheel). The application of this research is used to better understand pottery and potter’s wheels from their adoption and development during the Middle Bronze Age on Crete, c. 2000 to 1500 BCE. A revision of experimental work and methodologies is combined with archaeological experimentation in order to help clarify not only how tools such as the wheel were used but subsequently what roles these craftworkers played in past societies.

A Case for Coexistence of Different Potting Practices – Baltic Ware in Latvia

Latvia in the 11th–13th century poses a curious case for the coexistence of two different practices of Baltic ware production. The Baltic ware pots from lower reaches of the River Daugava and from the Courland region look not just stylistically, but also technologically different. Our paper assessed the production traces by using macro-observations, Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) and extensive ethnographic material of Slavic pottery production of the 1900s, as well as using modern replicas as visual aids to assist in the identification of the principal coil attachment methods. The results showed that potters from the lower reaches of Daugava used the wheel’s rotation extensively during the shaping process of Baltic ware. The production of the pots required the potter to possess a level of technical skill which implied a level of professionalisation. Baltic ware from Courland was less technically complicated and used comparatively more of the methods of handmade pottery production.

How the Uruk Potters Used the Wheel. New Data on Modalities and Conditions of Emergence of the Potter’s Wheel in the Uruk World

The phase and the ceramic materials that, in Southern Mesopotamia, go under the label of “Uruk” (after the toponym of the site in southern Iraq) have traditionally been considered the origin for the development of the potter’s wheel in the Near East, according to a perspective that associated the emergence of the potter’s wheel, the “mass” production of the so-called bevelled-rim bowls and first urbanization. According to recent excavations and ceramic studies it is now clear that this was a narrative based on a priori convictions. However, even if under very different socio-technical conditions, it is true that the potter’s wheel made an early appearance in Southern Mesopotamia within the Uruk cultural sphere, and then developed in a widespread and discontinuous way in the Uruk network. Based on recent ongoing fieldwork data from Syria (Tell Feres) and Iraqi Kurdistan (Logardan and Girdi Qala), ceramic analyses have taken into account new criteria to identify the use of the potter’s wheel. This paper outlines the chronological and socio-technical scenario behind the adoption of the potter’s wheel in the Uruk world, picturing the peculiarities of this cultural environment, as well as the parallels with the emergence conditions of the potter’s wheel in northern Mesopotamia and other areas of the Near East.

The Tracing the Potter’s Wheel Project (TPW): An Integrated Archaeological Investigation of the Potter’s Wheel in the Bronze Age Aegean

This backstory article discusses the work of the Tracing the Potter’s Wheel Project (TPW), an integrated archaeological research project using the potter’s wheel as a prism through which to investigate the transmission of craft knowledge in the Bronze Age Aegean. The TPW methodology integrates theoretical perspectives on social interactions, technological processes and innovation, with experimental, 3D digital and analytical methods for visualising and interpreting ceramics. Two central goals have emerged: to provide high-quality resources and standardised guidelines for researchers to learn how to technologically assess assemblages in their own research, and to broadly define the nature of the uptake and use of the pottery wheel in the Aegean during the Late Bronze Age.

Different Shades of Grey Minyan: Dissecting an “Iconic” Ceramic Class of Middle Bronze Age, Mainland Greece

The Middle Helladic Grey Minyan ware is usually assigned with archetypical features, including the systematic use of the potter’s wheel. However, because of the significant variation observed, terms such as “True Grey Minyan” and “Imitations of Grey Minyan” were commonly applied in order to emphasise the differences, which, nonetheless were never systematically analysed. The main subject of the present paper is to highlight the differences existing in the potting traditions of Grey Minyan in two nearby regions, namely the Argolid and Attica, which seem to belong to different cultural spheres, given the divergence observed especially in the shape repertoire. The identification of different production and consumption practices is obviously related to different cultural phenomena, as evidenced through (a) the production of similar wheel-fashioned and hand-built Grey Minyan shapes in Attica, and (b) the introduction of foreign potting traditions, namely wheel-fashioned Grey Minyan pots, which are completely alien to the local, handmade ceramics of the Argolid.

Material Methods; Considering Ceramic Raw Materials and the Spread of the Potter‘s Wheel in Early Iron Age Southern Iberia

This paper discusses the role of clay selection and preparation in the production of wheel-made pottery in Early Iron Age southern Iberia. The first systematic use of potter’s wheels in the production of Early Iron Age ceramics in southern Iberia corresponds to the establishment of pottery workshops associated with Phoenician trade colonies, dating to the period between the end of the 10th and 7th century BCE. There are still many gaps in our understanding of how technological knowledge was transmitted between the Phoenician workshops and “indigenous’ communities that adopted the potter’s wheel. This paper draws upon a growing body of archaeometric and ceramic technological research to consider clay selection strategies in these new workshops. Secondly, this paper will consider the role of ceramic raw materials in the development of new “hybrid’ ceramic forms, particularly grey-ware. It will hereby provide theoretical considerations surrounding the significance of material cultural hybridity in answering questions raised by postcolonial archaeologists about identity, cultural transmission and hybridisation in the context of the Phoenician colonial system.

Reinventing the Wheel: Perpetual Innovation in Sinhalese Potter Assemblages

This paper describes a linked series of potter’s wheel reinventions and abandonments from the mid-20th century through 2013. The wheel is analysed as one element in a complex and dynamic assemblage of people, resources, technologies, meanings, places, and time. Primary data come from ethnographic observations and interviews in a Sinhalese Sri Lankan potter community followed since 1974. As they shifted from one potter’s wheel to another, these potters have altered social and physical supporting technologies for procuring and preparing clay, acquiring fuel, organising labour, and marketing pottery. Some, having reached the limits of a wheel’s capabilities and their own bodies, have abandoned the wheel in favour of moulds and mechanical presses, setting off more cascades of change. Their experiences help to clarify the adaptive capacities and limitations of both potter’s wheels and their users. As this story unfolds in often unanticipated ways, it reveals the importance of attending to spatiotemporal scale. Locally, the wheel highlights the relatively fast-changing affordances and constraints with which individual potters, households, and communities engage. But the wheel also brings into focus the slower moving consequences of regional heterogeneities and paths laid down by national colonial and post-colonial policies decades ago.