Not meant to last: mobility and disposable pottery (Gibbs 2012) (original) (raw)
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THE ROLE OF POTTERY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF EARLY HUMAN SOCIETIES
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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.
2017, Mobility and pottery production, what for? Introductory remarks
Mobility and Pottery Production: Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives.
This edited volume deals with the mobility of humans, materials and things. Pottery studies of ancient Europe and contemporary Africa are taken as examples to illustrate how pottery vessels were made in different ways. Whether they were used, sold, given away or passed on over generations, they participated in human practices and mobil-ities, ranging from everyday life to single long-term migration events. By studying the making and the mobility of pots, potters, pottery mongers and pottery users, the focus shifts from ideas of one-sided notions of stable 'cultures' to ideas of appropriations, transformations and thus the negotiation of cultural forms. In the book's first section, the relationship between anthropology and archaeology is illuminated and the disciplines' different takes on 'culture', 'practice', 'mobility' and 'things' throughout major paradigmatic shifts are addressed. The second section unites empirical, object-centred archaeological case studies in which the examination of materials and pottery styles reveals that notions of fixed cultural entities are empirically untenable. The contributions in the third part argue from more actor-centred or symmetrical perspectives. It can be shown how humans and things are intertwined through practices and various rhythms of movement and mobility. Thus, they offer alternative ways to approach the (re)production, negotiation and transformation of cultural practices and their material forms.
THE ROLE OF POTTERY FOR HUNTER-GATHERERS: IF ONLY BINFORD HAD LIKED CERAMICS
It is time for a reconsideration of Early and Middle Woodland pottery from the Southeast. This pottery is noteworthy for its limited variability in form and size. Traditionally, it has been held that mobility and lack of leisure time hindered ceramic innovation and elaboration. However, the classic interpretation demands that we accept that for over a 1,000-year span, the performance attributes that led to specialized pot forms in the Late Woodland and Mississippian periods had no effect. If these pots are instead considered generalized tools (sensu Binford), their apparent blandness becomes a strength. These pots were made to do everything adequately (but nothing perfectly), to function as flexible tools within a subsistence/settlement system characterized by limited predictability. Test expectations are defined for evaluating the generalized tool hypothesis.
Pottery, Food and Status in Medieval England
Today I want to explore how we can use pottery to inform us about access to particular foodstuffs in the medieval period, as well as giving us information on measures and relating this to wealth and status. As a low value product, pottery is not the most immediately obvious tool for understanding social status, but by looking closely at vessel forms and the associations that particular types had with certain foodstuffs or markets, it may be possible to glean some useful information. The paper will be divided into 3 sections, firstly I will briefly discuss the sizes of pottery and differences in function, secondly I will discuss particular types of vessels which may act as an index of the consumption of certain foodstuffs and finally I will present some comparative case studies to explore how we can relate these ideas to studies of social status.
Archaeometry 55, 5, 825-851, 2013
This paper focuses on plain, stylistically unvaried pottery from three Late Neolithic sites from the Mondego Plateau, Portugal, and investigates ceramic production and exchange among small-scale prehistoric societies by means of thin-section petrography and chemical analysis (INAA). The results show that the majority of the pottery was made with widely available, granite-derived sedimentary clays, but petrographic differences between fabrics indicate collection at multiple locations within these deposits. Variation in chemical composition is consistent with site-specific sourcing areas, while comparison with data from earlier sites in the Mondego and surrounding mountains suggests that such sources were geographically restricted within the plateau. In contrast, the small percentage of vessels produced with residual clays of metamorphic and intermediate igneous origin, which outcrop over 10 km and 30 km from the archaeological sites, demonstrates that plain pottery did circulate during the Neolithic beyond the funerary sphere. This is the product of the routines of mobility and social networks of Neolithic groups across the wider landscape, which involved the exchange of 'mundane'vessels. Finally, the study demonstrates that micro-regional provenance studies can provide significant insights into prehistoric social landscapes if the data are interrogated beyond simplistic classifications of local and non-local.
2017, Making things, being mobile: Pottery as intertwined histories of humans and materials
Mobility and Pottery Production: Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives.
In this essay, I question current models of central European Neolithic societies that are informed by concepts of sedentarism and cultural homogeneity. Based on pottery styles, they miss out two fundamental conditions of human life: the constant oscillation between movement and stasis and the ongoing engagement with materials. Drawing on T. Ingold's thoughts on the 'making' of things and P. Bourdieu's habitus-theory, I argue that everyday human action like the making of a pot (1), unfolds in spatially and temporally bounded movements and mobilities and (2), emerges from an engagement of humans with their material and social landscapes. Hence, the features of pottery vessels comprise histories of their becoming that intertwine the itineraries of geological materials and their human makers. Some vessels are made and used at the same place ('local vessels'), others are transported over various distances ('translocal vessels'). When humans and things are on the move, encounters with otherness can trigger creative processes , which might also become materialised in pottery ('inbetween vessels'): the appropriation of new materials, different techniques, styles etc. To follow the itineraries of things thus offers an entry point to a deeper understanding of past peoples' mobilities and the negotiation and transformation of temporarily stable cultural forms. I will develop my approach on the pottery of the Neolithic settlement of Hornstaad-Hörnle IA at Lake Constance (DE) (3918-3902 BC).