CHILDREN AS POTTERS: apprenticeship patterns from Bell Beaker pottery of Copper Age Inner Iberia (Spain) (c. 2500-2000 cal BC) (original) (raw)
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APPRENTICESHIP AND LEARNING IN THE PREHISTORIC POTTER'S WORKSHOP
Pottery. History, Preparation, and Uses, 2019
While it may seem obvious that skilled potters in the ancient world must have begun their careers as novices, most likely young children, the evidence of their learning has often been overlooked in the archaeological record. Small clay objects, often crudely made, are usually considered votive objects or are largely ignored. Ethnographical studies of traditional potters in many parts of the world reveal that children in potting families were often responsible for various tasks such as gathering clay, helping to process it, and gathering fuel. They were also allowed to use the clay to make small objects, likely as toys, and they seem, in Cyprus at least, to have been able to participate with adult assistance in forming larger vessels. That these seemingly imperfect vessels were fired along with other vessels suggests that they were valued in some way. By using a methodology borrowed from educational psychology, both motor skills and cognitive development of various individuals can be evaluated through the analysis of brush strokes, decorative syntax, vessel symmetry, and finger marks. In this way, it is possible to determine to what extent children were involved in producing pottery in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages on Cyprus.
Learning to Make Pottery: A Look at How Novices Became Potters in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus.
Focusing on the handmade White Painted ware of the Middle Bronze Age, this study seeks to investigate the contribution of novices, both adult and children, to ancient ceramic production. Such handmade painted pottery highlights the potter’s motor skills in forming vessels, while the decoration reveals the painter’s ability to plan designs as well as to control tools. Novices, sometimes young children, were assimilated into the community of potters by teachers who sometimes assisted them with difficult tasks or offered models or verbal instructions to them while they worked. Using studies in child development to understand variation in pottery-making technology, this paper examines the amount of directive participation by experienced potters evident in vessels made by novices at different stages of cognitive and physical development.
Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 16:20, 2024
Amongst the pottery sets associated with the Argar culture (Cultura del Argar), in the Bronze Age in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula, it is common to find small recipients in funerary and household contexts. However, their techniques and manufacture reveal they do not seem to be products made by expert hands but rather the opposite. They are small artefacts, the result of the learning processes as well as the knowledge transfer between producers (adults) and learners (infants). To identify and describe these learning processes, we have developed, for the first time, research from a multiproxy perspective. To reach our objectives, we have implemented analytical protocols (macro and microscopic) oriented to determine both formal and functional aspects. The study departs from identifying the macro traces to define the chaîne opératoire. Then, we used X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to carry out their mineral and clay characterisation. The XRD was also related to the microstructural study made through scanning electron microscope (SEM) to verify the baking processes and the temperatures reached. Lastly, we applied gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and liquid chromatography (UPLC-HRMS), and we established the isotopic values via the use of gas chromatographycombustion-isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GC-C-IRMS) to ascertain if those recipients were used with a specific function or purpose. The results obtained let us reconstruct the learning processes as well as the learning and socialisation phases in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula in the Bronze Age.
Pots and Potters – Thoughts on ceramic technology and the craftsmen behind the product
Ethno-archaeological comparisons and experimental archaeology have long formed part of various fields of archaeological research throughout the Aegean and beyond. The present paper seeks to employ these methods to investigate ceramic technology and the social status of the potters in Neopalatial Crete. Fifty years after the pioneering studies of Hampe and Winter on potters and tilemakers in Greece and Italy, a comparison between pottery production in the Minoan workshop at Zominthos and a traditional potter at the village of Margarithes may offer interesting clues on the methods of production and the way things may or may not have changed over time. The opportunity to observe the work of traditional craftsmen is certainly going to decrease further throughout the 21 st century which makes the documentation and preservation of this source of information even more significant. This also bridges the gap to the second topic of the paper: the craftsmen behind the product.
2021
This paper focuses on the pottery production of Italian Copper Age communities from central Italy and its social implications. The study concerns a specific territory, the current Rome area, where the vessels coming from domestic and funerary contexts (4th and 3rd millennia BC) seem to differ in terms of production sequences, expertise and use. The social role of craftspeople in these groups is analysed through a series of aspects that directly and indirectly reflect craft behaviour, such as: technological choices in production, the skill required in specific manufacturing processes and the actual level of skill inferred from the ceramic evidence analysed. The methodological approach presented in this paper combines learning theories with a detailed empirical investigation of the potter’s gesture. Data provided by traceological analyses, focusing on manufacturing traces and use wear, compositional analyses of ceramic pastes (petrographic and chemical analyses) and experimental archaeology (reproduction of pottery modelling sequences and ceramic use activities) are interpreted in a wider framework considering also the social value of the craft product. Empirical results revealed specific behaviour patterns in production and use, suggesting different and coexistent degrees of experience and knowledge within domestic production and a higher level of skill and time dedication for shapes used on funerary occasions. This leads to the question of whether the producers of goods were also always the consumers, within contexts where social inequality is perceived as incipient and the role of artisans is better understood if discussed according to usually underestimated aspects such as the skills of craftspeople, the presence of a supportive learning environment and the social value of the ceramic product.
Mud and Fire: A Potter’s Insight into Prehistoric Pottery Technology
As a potter and maker of replica pottery I try to adhere as closely as possible to the methods and materials used by the original makers and in doing so gain insights into ancient technology. In this paper I give a potter's per spective on prehistoric pottery-making, try to dispel some of the myths surrounding this ancient technology and show that there is far more to making a ‘simple’ pot than most people realise. I explain why I don't like the terms such as ‘coil building’ or ‘bonfire firing’. I believe that it is important for archaeologists to have a better understanding of the processes that created the artefacts and contextual evidence that they uncover, as without this knowledge valuable evidence from excavation could be, and almost certainly has been, lost or misinterpreted.
2014
The present paper represents a study of handmade ceramics from different Late Bronze Age to Late Iron Age (1100-50 BC) archaeological sites located in Majorca (Spain), combining petrography, X-ray powder diffraction, X-ray fluorescence, and scanning electron microscopy. The analysis of the ceramic samples focused on the establishment of specific chaînes opératoires. As such, this analysis represents a useful tool for assessing different technological traditions of pottery production throughout prehistory. This theoretical and methodological approach, in agreement with the historical context, has permitted the interpretation of significant social and technical practices related to pottery production. As the data suggest, the preparation of pottery pastes underwent great changes during the periods under consideration, and especially between the sherds from the different archaeological sites studied. The changes may have occurred in response to new dynamics in the social organisation of pottery production, knowledge transmission systems, and learning contexts in the investigated area.
CRAFTER: Potting Techniques of the Bronze Age
The EXARC Journal, 2019
Throughout its history, experimental archaeology has fulfilled a valuable role in archaeological research, allowing craftspeople and scholars alike to deepen an understanding of people and their societies in the past. EXARC’s recent involvement in the CRAFTER project, and the author’s participation in its International Meeting in Mula (Spain), has demonstrated that significant knowledge gaps remain in our understanding of potting practices in Europe during the Bronze Age. The following discussion provides an overview of some of the benefits of focusing research on defining those practices more clearly and consistently, while raising a few issues which have historically complicated matters. A very brief summary is then provided of some recent contributions which explicitly describe pottery forming practices at sites across Europe, presented following the very broad tripartite system of Early, Middle, and Late Bronze Age. Finally, some lingering questions are posed, in order to examine how we as experimental archaeologists and craftspeople may work more collaboratively in order to create a fuller and richer picture of the European Bronze Age potter’s life.
In "Craft and science: International perspectives on archaeological ceramics". UCL Qatar Series in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, Doha, Qatar: Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation., 2014
The present paper represents a study of hand-made ceramics from different Late Bronze Age to Late Iron Age (1100–50 BC) archaeological sites located in Majorca (Spain), combining petrography, X-ray powder diffraction, X-ray fluorescence, and scanning electron microscopy. The analysis of the ceramic samples focused on the establishment of specific chaînes opératoires. As such, this analysis represents a useful tool for assessing different technological traditions of pottery production throughout prehistory. This theoretical and methodological approach, in agreement with the historical context, has permitted the interpretation of significant social and technical practices related to pottery production. As the data suggest, the preparation of pottery pastes underwent great changes during the periods under consideration, and especially between the sherds from the different archaeological sites studied. The changes may have occurred in response to new dynamics in the social organisation of pottery production, knowledge transmission systems, and learning contexts in the investigated area.
Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2022
Fingertip impressions preserved in the surface of clay artefacts can provide demographic details about the people who manufactured and decorated pottery vessels, and by extension allow exploration of the composition of communities of practice engaged in pottery manufacture. This paper describes the development of a method of measurement and analysis of fingertip impressions which were sometimes used as decorative motifs on pot surfaces. The technique can be applied to pottery from across archaeological periods; however, the research presented here focusses on communities of practice among Early and Middle Bronze Age potters of eastern England, and assessing their demographic make-up through analysis of fingertip impressions. The preserved fingertip impressions reveal potting communities comprised children and women, but adult men were seemingly excluded, and suggest a connection between craft activity, age and sex.