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EAA 2024 session - Rome 28 - 31 August Advances in archaeological science (e.g., aDNA and isotopes analyses) are challenging traditional archaeological narratives and posing new questions especially regarding major transformations in European and Mediterranean societies during prehistoric times. Ceramic is an important component of the material record and gives us insights into cultural, chronological, technological, symbolic and socioeconomic information beyond simple chrono-cultural determinations. The combination of stylistic, archaeometric, technological, trace and functional analyses, as well as experimental archaeology, has become established in archaeological research in recent years. At the same time, anthropological, sociological and ethnoarchaeological studies have informed the interpretation of potter's skill and knowledge. This interdisciplinary approach demonstrated to be crucial to detect and explore technical, cultural, symbolic, and socioeconomic change. With this in mind, the session aims to bring together a broad range of expertise from archaeological theory, experimental work and the natural sciences, to present research about understandings of periods of change through the lens of ancient ceramic in the Mediterranean basin, from Neolithic to Iron Age. In particular, we aim to focus on specific questions: What happens to the ceramic production in times of cultural, socioeconomic or population transformations? Can periods of change be detected through advanced ceramic analyses? How can these different approaches to ceramics be combined to tackle transitions? What are the mechanisms of resistance and change in contexts of intense socio-cultural innovation? What is the role played by potters' knowledge and skill in these processes? We welcome studies about the ceramic analyses in times of cultural and socioeconomic change with an emphasis on the variety of theoretical and methodological approaches adopted in relation to different contexts and time periods.
Archaeometry
Comments On ‘Technological Choices in Ceramic Production’, Archaeometry, 42(1), 1-76, 2000In I. Caloi & C. Langohr (eds), Technology in Crisis. Technological changes in ceramic production during periods of trouble, Acts of an International Workshop Held at UCLouvain, 18-19th February 2016 (Aegis 16), Louvain-la-Neuve, 2018, 21-33.
Technological changes in ceramic production during periods of trouble Methodological approaches and matters of scale.2018 •
B.A.R International Series 2193, Oxford, Archaeopress, p. 80-88.
Anthropological interpretation of ceramic assemblages: foundations and implementations of technological analysis.2011 •
Technological ceramic analysis aims to studying the synchronic and diachronic variability of archaeological assemblages from an anthropological angle. It has its bases in actualist studies (anthropology and ethno-archaeology). After a reminded of the principal results obtained in the last decades, methodological results are extracted that are applicable to archaeological assemblages; from these a classification procedure is proposed. The latter, based on the chaîne opératoire concept, allows a controlled image of the various traditions that make up a ceramic assemblage; given that a tradition corresponds to a social entity which can vary in sociological nature and include several production units. On a diachronic level it enable stables features to be distinguished from those that evolve through time, thereby witnessing to endogenous and/or exogenous evolutionary phenomena. In this way technological ceramic analysis can lay the foundations of many-faceted interpretations, the study of technical traditions being the first stage for subsequently analysing the organisation and distribution of ceramic production, the function of the sites, and, lastly, the ways in which technical and stylistic characteristics evolve.
Proceedings of the International Ceramics Conference, Austceram94: Forming the Future
Ceramic Analysis and Social Processes: pottery and society in antiquity1994 •
Pottery is the most commonly recovered and analysed artefact type in Middle Eastern archaeology. The usefulness of pottery to the archaeologist stems from its abundance, durability, and stylistic variability. As vessel shape and surface decoration reflect the aesthetic preferences of producers and consumers, significant stylistic changes are often used as evidence for broader social change. Two examples are cited: Early Islamic Jordan and Roman Europe. Pottery studies in both regions have indicated that the arrival of a new ruling elite had little immediate impact on the local population. The evidence for major social change does not appear until almost two centuries later in the archaeological record.
АРХЕОЛОГІЯ, МУЗЕЄЗНАВСТВО, ПАМ'ЯТКОЗНАВСТВО: освітній та дослідницький аспектиVITA ANTIQUA
The Brief «Walk-Through» in the Archaeological Ceramic investigations in the way to a New Approach in Neolithic Ceramics Styles Research2019 •
The study of ceramic is one of the broadest research areas in archaeological sciences. Over the last two centuries, archaeologists have developed a number of approaches and methods that have had different goals of the studies: from the study of ceramics as an object of art to the reproduction of the manufacture technologies, and the study of pottery as a «mediator» for the study of everyday life of the ancient population. The purpose of the article is a brief review of the scientific methods developed at different times in Western and Eastern Europe, North America, and to discover new combinations of research approaches that would allow archaeological ceramic complexes to be explored at a new level. This is especially true of the difficulties encountered in the study of Neolithic utensils, given the incomplete forms of utensils, the relatively small number of finds, and natural damage. The new paradigm in ceramics investigations is the studies of the raw material of Neolithic ceramics using natural methods of analysis, such as binocular, p-XRF, spectrographic analyses. The results may open up new knowledge regarding the mobility of the ancient population and the cultural exchange between different groups of the Neolithic population. Keywords: Neolithic, ceramic studies, pottery, migration, cultural exchange.
2011 •
This article from the ‘Classics Review’ section of the journal ‘ethnoarchaeology’ provides the back story and update for “Ceramic Theory and Cultural Process” published in 1985 and reprinted many times since then. That book built on the seminal article that I wrote for ‘Current Anthropology’ ten years earlier, and my responses to my critics there that stimulated me to write the book (those articles are on this site). Besides several anecdotes about the book, one section of the article provides a brief ethnography of its publication at the Cambridge University Press. One of my greatest frustrations that stimulated writing of the book was that my former focus on the cognitive anthropology (e. g. Arnold 1971) of ceramic production and my focus on what has come to be known as ‘technological choice’ among potters failed to provide much insight into understanding ceramic production outside of the ceramics in the communities that I studied. Those theoretical and conceptual perspectives, although helpful and useful, did not help me provide insight into another pottery making community except that ‘potters make choices’ about resources, vessel shapes, and design. I already knew that from my field work; it was very obvious to me. I had written several articles that incorporated potters’ choices that I called ‘decision trees’. (These articles will be added to this site in due time), and the frustration of the incomparability of my perspective from one pottery making community to another that led me to rethink my experiences with potters in Mexico, Peru and Guatemala, in order to discover new insights that were truly cross-cultural in scope. The results were generalizations, but not necessarily universals, in ’Ceramic Theory and Cultural Process’. Some of these generalizations challenged assumptions and generalizations that archaeologists used to interpret the past. Finally, the article makes several updates to the ceramic resource model, and other feedback mechanisms in the book.
Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
2000 The use of ethnoarchaeology for the archaeological study of ceramic production2000 •
The discovery at Tsoungiza of discrete deposits of pottery datable to several different stages of the terminal Middle Bronze Age (MH III) and initial Late Bronze Age (LH I, LH IIA) enable a fairly detailed assessment of technological changes in ceramics at generation-long intervals over a period of roughly two centuries (ca. 1700–1500 B.C.). The changes in question involve the selective adoption of the wheel for vessel manufacture, the deployment of multiple colors of painted ornament, shifting preferences in surface treatments and paste compositions, and modifications in the standardization of vessel sizes as well as forms. The presence of plentiful imports during various chronological stages facilitates the identification of potential sources for particular aspects of technological change. But methodologies for reconstructing the specific social mechanisms whereby these changes were introduced and eventually adopted remain to be devised.
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Journal of Archaeological Research
Current issues in ceramic ethnoarchaeology2003 •
Archaeometry 55, 5, 825-851
Plain Pottery and Social Landscapes: Reinterpreting the Significance of Ceramic Provenance in the Neolithic2013 •
Y. Galanakis, T.C. Wilkinson, and J. Bennet (eds.), ΑΘΥΡΜΑΤΑ: critical essays on the archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean in honour of E. Susan Sherratt. Oxford
(2014) Ceramic developments in coastal Western Anatolia at the dawn of the Early Iron Age2014 •
Chronika vol.7
Interpreting Social Changes Through Ceramic Manufacture: A preliminary analysis of Late Iron Age handmade Thracian ceramics2017 •
2021 •
2014 •
Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 7:129-137
2000 Advances in Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology.2000 •
1999 •
In Burnez-Lanotte, L. (Ed.) "Matières à Penser": Raw materials Acquisition and Processing in Early Neolithic Pottery Productions. Proceedings of the Workshop of Namur (Belgium) 29 and 30 May 2015. Société préhistorique française, 111–132.
Looking into houses: analysis of LBK ceramic technological change on a household level«Incipit 8» Workshop de Estudos Medievais da Universidade do Porto
Pottery of Cencelle: a research instrument for the functional and social reconstruction of daily context of a medieval city2020 •
De Gruyter Open Ltd.: Warsaw/Berlin
Materiality, Techniques and Society in Pottery Production2014 •