THE ROLE OF POTTERY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF EARLY HUMAN SOCIETIES (original) (raw)
2023, 1. BİLSEL INTERNATIONAL GORDİON SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES CONGRESS
This research focuses on examining fired clay pottery, a robust material that offers invaluable historical insights. The study analyses ceramics according to their various attributes, including shape, surface type, color, drawing patterns, and decorative styles. The analysis yields valuable information concerning production and decoration stages. Furthermore, this study elucidates the techniques employed in ascertaining the fabrication period of fired clay products and the comparative analysis with other ceramics. Notably, the research confirms that the ornamentation of ceramics from dissimilar regions and eras varies distinctively, while varying types of clay or modes of production are frequently used. The significance of these details lies in their ability to date the region, map trade and communication networks, and determine the presence of multiple human groups. Pottery development research utilizes a range of scientific methods to trace the raw material sources of ceramic production and underscores their importance in reconfiguring the economics, production techniques, organization, and social aspects of ceramic production. Conclusively, this research highlights the significance of investigating prehistoric kiln-fired ceramics for comprehending the function of pottery in the origination of early human communities and for gaining a deeper appreciation of our shared cultural legacy.
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2004
The objective of this thesis is to research the invention and innovation of pottery technology in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, in particular the Late and Final Pre-Pottery Neolithic B and Early Pottery Neolithic in the Near East. My approach will involve examining the various factors that are involved with the origins of clay vessel manufacture including: 1) the context of this event like the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B and Early Pottei7 Neolithic Societies; 2) the history of clay vessel manufacture such as the sporadic invention of pottery before its widespread adoption; 3) preceding technology; 4) circulation of goods and cultural and technological change; 5) settlement pattern change and movements of people; 6) domestication of animals and emergence of pastoralism; 7) ethno-archaeological comparisons; 8) ecological conditions; 9) social choice. The origins of pottery technology on a large scale are interrelated to all of these factors, and would not have emerged without all of these circumstances in place.
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De Gruyter Open Ltd.: Warsaw/Berlin, 2014
This open access peer-reviewed book 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.
Yu. B. Tsetlin. The origin of ancient pottery production
Journal of Historical Archaeology & Anthropological Sciences, 2018
The origin of pottery production involves two interconnected processes: the emergence of vessel shapes and pottery technology. To clarify the nature of the first process we need to identify prototypes for the shapes of clay vessels and to determine the functions of the first clay vessels. The study of pottery technology involves the earliest plastic raw materials, composition of pottery pastes and vessels’ firing regimes. The research is based on archaeological ceramics from the Near East and Anatolia of 9-8 millennia ago and from the Japan and the Far East of Russia 13-11 millennia ago. A range of ethnographic data was also used. The origin of pottery production (including shapes and technology of vessels) was a result of two main factors - adaptive processes of the tribes to local natural and economical situation and human natural ability to imitation. That is why the origin of pottery production was a polycentric process. It had appeared a lot of times in various regions of the Earth as long as its all-round distribution closed the beginnings of the process. Keywords: origin of ceramics, shape of vessel, raw material, pottery paste
During Prehistory, pottery represents above all a practical production, although with a functional meaning that stretches beyond its utilitarian feature. It points out a series of specific activities that could be exclusively economic, but could be symbolic, ideological, aesthetic and ritual as well – being also assumed as an expression of prestige and social distinction. It is an element that reflects for itself a set of daily actions and behaviours of a community, inseparable from the modus vivendi of the First Agro‐Pastoral Societies (from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age) – inclusively accompanying the agents of a human group in the funerary contexts. Right from its first productions in Early Neolithic, pottery corresponds to the archaeological remain better represented in the artefactual record. Its practical inutility once broken, its resistence and preservation capacity confers to pottery sherds an almost “ubiquitous” part of the archaeological record. As archaeographical data, this artefacual category is traditionaly used in research to establish chrono‐cultural sequences, although it can offer other perspetives throughout a detailed process of analysis, classification, ordination and interpretation. Even if we can attend to the construction of new and renovated questionnaires for Material Cultural analysis over the last years, they were not yet enough to overlap some of the methodological limitations inherent to the studies of pottery in prehistoric contexts in Iberia, such as: – In the archaeological speech, pottery elements are usually used as means for chronological definition, conditioning their whole informative potential, particularly in what concerns the purpose of artefact’s production, as well as the entire subsequent Technological Process; – The criteria for the Sample Selection not always are illustrative, their suitability to the different kinds of contexts and their representativity in the totality of the ceramic set in study are not so evident; – The need for Normalize methologies and criteria of analysis, enabling the procedure of the indispensable comparative studies, even if one can recognize that each pottery set has an identity related to the chrono‐cultural and geographic scope in which it was produced and with the archaeological context in which it was identified; – The predominance of macroscopical analysis, disclosing generic readings about pastes (temper and firing) and rarely resorting to tools from another disciplinary fields such as Archaeometry, mainly due to its costs, but also to the unawareness about the informative potential to which we can accede; JIA 2015 VIII YOUNG RESEARCHERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY CONFERENCE Between science and culture: from interdisciplinarity to the transversality of archaeology – The frail expression of Experimental Archaeology, a tool that allows a more complete approach to the production process of the pottery elements and their functionality, providing a high coefficient of information; – The studies that look for elements to understand and explain the processes of Archaeological Site Formation in pottery sherds are still very inconsistent, as well as for the definition of the possible functionality of a site (resorting to the analysis of preservation condition of artefacts and in the dimension of sherds, together with their spatial distribution in the excavated areas. With the organization of this session, we intend to promote an extended reflection about the issues listed above and in the presentation of new data framed by the following subjects: – Analysis of the Chaîne Opératoire models (areas of raw‐material procurement; technological modalities of artefactual production; functionality; manipulation; contexts of use, deposition and discard); – Typological Classification; – Decorative Processes and Systems (social, functional, artistic and/or cultural dimension); – Pottery as an element of Chronological Definition and evaluation of the importance/pertinence of eventual “chrono‐cultutal indicators” in the scientific speech in terms of their precision; ‐ Identification of Continuities and Ruptures in the pottery production in Time and Space; ‐ Analysis of eventual Exchange and Circulation Networks; ‐ Interdisciplinarity, resorting to studies in the fields of Archaeometry, Anthropology and Ethnography. The choice for pottery as the principal focus of this session is justifiable by the fact that ceramic studies are one of the main subjects of the archaeological research of the First Agro‐Pastoral Societies. It is also substantiated because the category/type of archaeological data in which pottery is included, in its material dimension, constitutes a privileged link between the fields of the Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences, where the study of Material Culture has now acquired special importance over the last years. Therefore, beginning with an essentially, but not exclusively, archaeological overview, our proposal, with the organization of this session, is to discuss the adoption of an in‐depth analysis frame, crossing contributes from different disciplinary areas that, with specific perspectives, work on the fields of Material Culture (namely, of prehistoric pottery). From the Natural Sciences, in their most analytic aspect, to the Social Sciences, Anthropology in particular, we assume this session as an opportunity for dialogue and establishment of broad connections and collaborations in Material Culture studies.
The Power of the Pot: Social and Archaeological Uses of Ceramics
Ceramic materials are one of the most common and informative artifact types found on archaeological sites. Archaeologists use their attributes to explore diverse issues, ranging from site chronology and function to production sequences and technological change, and from economy and exchange to foodways and social identity. This course combines lectures, readings, discussions, lab activities, and research to help students investigate the complex relationship between pots and people. By examining the range of questions that can be tackled using ceramic data, as well as the methods that are appropriate for such investigations, students will prepare themselves to undertake their own independent research projects.
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Since the earliest use of pottery, vessels have been associated with both the general shape and specific parts of the human body. The production of human-shaped pottery might be understood as one element of the spectrum of figural art in prehistoric communities. The idea of studying anthropomorphic pottery and the return of human beings into a body made of clay, which forms the core theme of this collection of 12 papers, stems from work on anthropomorphic features of Neolithic communities between the Near East and Europe. Contributors are engaged in questions about the analysis of human features and characteristics on vessels, their occurrence, function and disposal. Beginning with the European Neolithic and moving on through the Bronze and Iron Ages, papers focus on diachronic archaeological patterns and contexts as well as on the theoretical background of this particular type of container in order to shed light on similarities and differences through the ages and to understand possibilities and limits of interpretation. Review: https://journals.openedition.org/acost/2486
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