Pottery Materials Research Articles

Excavations at I Westgate Street, Gloucester, 1975

LIMITED excavation in Gloucester showed timber structures replacing stone in the late 4th century. The town centre was re-planned in the early 5th century, creating the line of medieval Westgate Street. Preserved organic levels of the 9th century indicate an agricultural economy with animal stabling in the town centre. 10th- to 12th-century levels were also excavated. Specialist reports are offered on Saxon and medieval pottery, seeds, textiles, wood and other materials.

Buccino: The Early Bronze Age Village of Tufariello

AbstractThe excavation of the Early Bronze Age village at Tufariello (Buccinno) in southern Italy represents a major archaeological advance in a little-known period of Italian prehistory in this region. The emphasis of the following report is in the integration of archaeological material, especially the statistical study of abundant pottery material from three distinct stratigraphic phases of the site, and the discussion of the unexpected rectangularly planned buildings of the site, with reports on evidence of flora and fauna. The result is the first synthetic view of the life of a southern Italian community of the end of the third millennium B.C.The excavation has been the most recent phase of the exploration of this area undertaken since 1968 by Brown University in collaboration with the Superintendency of Antiquities of Salerno. This report is made up of the following sections. Introduction and Stratigraphy by R. Ross Holloway Architecture by Ned ...

Some Early Iron Age Sites in Southern and Western Zambia

Summary The Victoria Falls region of southern Zambia is rich in archaeological material, particularly of the Early Iron Age. Excavations at Chundu and Zambezi Farm uncovered large collections of pottery, iron objects and other material culture. A sub-rectangular hut plan was discovered at Zambezi Farm. Pottery analysis associates these sites with Dambwa, and the ceramic seriation suggests that they form a unit as the third stage of a four-part Early Iron Age sequence proposed for the area. Survey reports are included for five sites north-west of Livingstone, Zambia and an excavation at Musya presents evidence of three occupations ranging from the eighth to the sixteenth centuries. Pottery from sites in western Zambia suggests a cultural complex related to but typological different from other early manifestations in the country. The pottery from Sefula Mission illustrates one of the sparse collections from this large portion of the country.

Myrhøj, 3 hustomter med klokkebægerkeramik

Myrhøj, 3 hustomter med klokkebægerkeramik

Ethnomineralogy of Ticul, Yucatan Potters: Etics and Emics

AbstractThe emic cultural categories of pottery materials used by the community of potters in Ticul, Yucatan, were compared to the etic mineralogical analysis of these materials. The study reveals that there is a definite relationship between the cognitive ethnomineralogical system used by the community of potters in Ticul and the verbal, non-verbal, and material aspects of the process of selecting and using raw materials for making pottery. This relationship indicates that the Ticul potter has a sophisticated understanding of his raw materials and suggests several implications for archaeology: (1) the cultural patterns which are manifested in the artifacts may be cognitive; (2) since potters’ discriminations are manifested in the physical world, it should be possible to reconstruct ancient emic categories from physical contrasts in the artifacts without the use of ethnographic analogy; (3) the definition of temper as nonplastics may eliminate important cultural information from archaeological consideration; and (4) the community of potters is the unit of population which uses a particular ethnomineralogical system and would be expected to produce a paste and slip combination which is relatively uniform. All of these data indicate that many of the notions of cognitive anthropology can be successfully applied to archaeological considerations.

A Contribution to the Study of Glastonbury Ware from South-Western Britain

SummaryA petrological study of the rock inclusions present in Early Iron Age Glastonbury ware suggests that the raw materials for pottery making were not usually obtained on or near the find-sites, but from specific localities throughout south-western England. Since each of the petrological groups has its own range of typological traits there is reason to believe that the completed pots, rather than the materials, were transported, suggesting the activity of specialist potters working from production centres. The relevance of the new evidence to the origin of the decorative styles and the cultural interpretation of the pottery is briefly discussed.

To djurslandske mosefund

Two Peat-finds from Djursland.Between 1940 and 1947 large quantities of pottery, mainly from the New Stone Age and from the Early Iron Age, were found in Danish peat bogs. Djursland, in Jutland, is one of the areas from which particularly rich hauls reached the National Museum, and two of these discoveries, from the Celtic Iron Age, are here described.Torsager Dairy: 600 metres east of Torsager Church. Here numerous pre­historic objects were found at a depth of about one metre, over a stretch of 400 metres about 20-40 metres from the shore of the peat bog). The skull of a woman, aged about 40-50, lay in the peat, without jawbone or any other part of the skeleton. Of ten bones of horses found, seven were pelvic bones, lying together in a heap. Three pieces of broken wooden tools were found, and in addition well over 100 whole or fragmentary pottery vessels, of which 19 have been preserved. They were without doubt all unbroken when they were deposited in the bog. The rim sections are rounded, thickened or straight cut, the handles ribbon-shaped and the bases broad and flat or else ring-bases, while ornamentation consisted of an offset shoulder or of one or two lines running round the shoulder (figs. 1-2). Comparison with Becker's material from Trelleborg) and with the pottery discovered in the lower level of the Borremose moat shows clearly that the greater part belongs to the Northeast Jutland cultural group in Becker's Period II. This is a clear case of offerings in a sacred peat bog, and as Torsager has always been a religious centre in Christian times and, to judge by the name, was also of cult importance before Christendom, this discovery can be equated with the sacrificial deposits from Vimose and Torsbjerg, both also places where the names suggest a heathen cult centre.Albøge Peat Bog: a little east of Albøge town. Here, in a packet of peat only 70 metres across containing a 4 metre thick peat layer, a large number of prehistoric objects vere found). Apart from a Stone Age pottery vessel and a wooden cart axle, which lay deeper, all the objects were found a half to one metre below the surface, at a height of about two metres above the bed of the bog. 6 pottery vessels, 15 bones of mammals, one hammer stone and 5 fragments of flint axes were found scattered individually. In addition there were found about 80-85 pottery vessels, almost all in small fragments, an iron sword and a pottery spindle-whorl. All these lay in 23 heaps of sherds, each about three-quarters of a metre in diameter and consisting of sherds from a large number of vessels, sherds of normally fired, underfired and overfired vessels being found mixed up with lumps of raw clay. The largest heap contained 672 sherds. The spindle-whorl, which lay in the bottom of a vessel, had been made from a sherd. The sword was of typical La Tene type, with a tang and sloping shoulders. Among the pottery material (figs. 3-4) occurred rims of round, thickened, straightcut and fluted types; handles were ribbon-shaped, fluted or X-shaped, a ring-base occurred once, and ornamentation was un­common. Parallels can be found at Trelleborg), in the upper layer of the Borremose moat and at Kraghede). This pottery also belongs to the Northeast Jutland group within the Late Celtic Iron Age, but while three of the individually found vessels and five of the heaps of sherds belong to Becker's Period II two of the sherd heaps must be ascribed to Period III and seven to the transi­tional stage II/III or to Period III. The present writer interprets this discovery as rubbish discarded from pottery manufacture, each heap representing a single clearing up of a workshop. This, therefore, in contrast to the Torsager discovery, must be considered a completely secular deposit.Painted pottery: is very rare in Denmark. To date eight painted vessels are known from the Early Roman Iron Age, from Vendsyssel and South Jut­land), and one vessel from the Late Celtic Period, from Bukkerup peat bog on Funen. In the Albøge discovery there were eleven painted sherds and in the Torsager discovery one (fig. 5). Including these discoveries the use of black paint is known from the Celtic Iron Age and of gray and white paint from the Roman Period. The following patterns occur: dots, centre-pointed circles, zigzags, triangles, "crescent-friezes" and vertical and horizontal stripes. As these are the same patterns as are used in incised ornamentation, and as the shapes of the vessels are local, we may conclude that a native school of pottery painting existed in the Early Iron Age, with its roots in Central EuropePovl Simonsen

廢棄窯業品原料の精製及び利用法(第一報)

廢棄窯業品原料の精製及び利用法(第一報)

The measurement of high temperatures by means of pottery materials

The measurement of high temperatures by means of pottery materials

I.—On some Buildings of the Romano-British Period discovered at Clanville, near Andover, and on a deposit of Pewter Vessels of the same period found at Appleshaw, Hants. With Appendixes

In the immediate neighbourhood of my house in the village of Appleshaw, on the north-western border of Hampshire, the sites are unusually close together of those dwellings of the Romano-British period which are, with a certain vagueness, termed Roman villas. Appleshaw is distant five miles north-west from Andover; one mile north of Andover two Roman roads intersect, the one running from Old Sarum north-easterly to Silchester, the other from Winchester north-westerly to Cirencester. At Finkley, close to the point of intersection, pottery and other Roman material has from time to time been unearthed, and the locality is one of those which have, by a somewhat unconvincing reference to the Antonine itinerary and to etymology, been identified with the unascertained site of Vindomis. Imagine these two roads at their crossing to stand like an upright capital X over the town of Andover, with that town in the lowest angle; my own nearer neighbourhood will lie in the western or left-hand angle. Three-quarters of a mile east of my house is the lately-examined site upon which I have to report particularly this evening. One mile north and a little west (all the distances mentioned are measured in radius from my house) is a villa on the Redenham estate, excavated some fifty years back by Sir John Pollen, the landowner. It appears that no plans were made and no record kept.