The Longevity of Ceramic Production Centres: historical contingency in the analysis of pottery.

Summary

Recent analytical programmes on pottery of the Aegean Bronze Age have identified compositional patterns that not only link the early third millennium to the late second millennium BC, but also clearly lay the foundations for production through to Roman times. Continuity in ceramic craft practice can be understood in terms of specific choices made in raw material selection and manipulation, but also at times through the recurrence of characteristic methods of vessel forming and even the nature, quality and aesthetics of surface finishes.

While many chemical and petrographic studies of ceramics interpret technological reconstructions and the distribution of pottery products in terms of the link between production organisation and political structure, such continuities call into question such simple correlations. Using a number of different, detailed case studies which emphasise the history of practice in specific production centres, this paper questions what we are to understand by continuity in pottery manufacture and the degree to which such practices may even mask variation in craft organisation and perceived productive complexity.

The implications of these emerging patterns for our understanding of both Old and New World ceramic production are considered.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

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