Ceramic Practices. Pottery Manufacture and Artisanal Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean (Glasgow, 26 February 2010)

Pottery Workshop as part of the Tracing Networks project on Colonial Traditions, to be held at the Department of Archaeology, University of Glasgow

Aims:  The aim of this workshop is two-fold: in the first place, we intend to think about pottery production as a craft in general terms and in the second place we want to explore how (some of) those terms can be used to steer our thinking about pottery manufacturing in the ancient Mediterranean – the western Mediterranean in the earlier and central centuries of the first millennium BC

Date & Time: Friday 26 February 2010, 1-5 pm

Venue: Department of Archaeology, University of Glasgow
    (http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/archaeology/)


Programme

1.00  opening & welcome

1.05  Peter van Dommelen  Stretching the Chaîne Opératoire: Ceramic Workshops in Context

1.30  Helen Loney  Craft Development and Tradition: Understanding Technological Transfer in Ceramic Workshop Production

2.00  Ian Whitbread  Strategies for Petrographic/Chemical Analysis of Pottery from Regional Surveys

2.30  Andrea Roppa  Between Tradition and Choice: Interpreting the Pottery from the Iron Age site of S’Uraki (Sardinia)

3.00  coffee & tea break

3.30  Daniel Sahlén  Technological Performance and Social Choices, from Cooking Pots to Crucibles

4.00  Elisa Alonso López  Chemical and Mineralogical Analyses of Ceramics: Looking For the Technological Choices

4.30  Concluding Discussion

5.00  drinks


Each speaker has suggested one publication (journal article or book chapter) that may usefully be read as an introduction to her/his presentation. These are listed with the abstracts overleaf.

 
Abstracts
 
Peter van Dommelen  Stretching the Chaîne Opératoire: Ceramic Workshops in Context
I will begin this paper by revisiting briefly the concept of the chaîne opératoire in the light of theoretical assumptions relating to social practices and individual decision-making. I will then move on to discuss how these concepts relate to the organisation of ceramic workshops by exploring some archaeological evidence from Punic amphorae and workshops/kiln sites.
- Dobres, M.A. 2010: Archaeologies of technology, Cambridge Journal of Economics 34: 103-114.

Helen Loney Craft Development and Tradition: Understanding Technological Transfer in Ceramic Workshop Production
In this paper I wish to first explore the manner of the transfer of technical knowledge within particularly pottery craft training. I wish to emphasize the importance of social organization and structure in directing training and maintaining craft ‘traditions’ over time and economic change. I will then suggest the relevance of these conclusions to the understanding of the variation in particular Punic amphora construction and use.
- Loney, H. 2007: Prehistoric Italian Pottery Production: Motor Memory, Motor Development and Technological transfer, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 20.2: 183-207.

Ian Whitbread  Strategies for Petrographic/Chemical Analysis of Pottery from Regional Surveys
Ceramics from regional surveys open new avenues for exploring regional production, exchange and consumption networks using petrographic and chemical analyses. Surface scatters produce distinct constraints on the recovery of ceramics, however, and this paper will examine how these might best be addressed when undertaking materials-based investigations.
- Whitbread, I. K., M. J. Ponting and B. Wells, 2007: Temporal Patterns in Ceramic Production in the Berbati Valley, Greece, Journal of Field Archaeology 32, 177-193.

Andrea Roppa  Between Tradition and Choice: Interpreting the Pottery from the Iron Age site of S’Uraki (Sardinia)
In this paper I offer an overview of the research strategy employed in the forthcoming study of pottery from the indigenous Iron Age site of S’Uraki (Sardinia, Italy). I approach this research by focusing on manufacturing techniques and fabric analyses of indigenous (Nuragic) and colonial (Phoenician) material. I wish to raise two sets of questions: the former pertaining to the practical aspects of the research; the latter related to the cultural significance of technological choices.
- Sillar, B. and M. S. Tite  2000: The challenge of ‘technological choices’ for materials science approaches in archaeology, Archaeometry 42.1, 2-20.  

Daniel Sahlén  Technological performance and social choices, from cooking pots to crucibles
The idea of technological choices has in recent years had a huge impact on material studies of ceramics. Applications of the concept have been particular successful in the study of cooking pots, continuing a long debate on temper, thermal properties and social constructions. In my presentation I will look at these issues and compare the materiality of cooking pots with that of crucibles to investigate if we can apply the same theory to understand these two materials.
- Tite, M. and V. Kilikoglou 2002: Do we understand cooking pots and is there an ideal cooking pot? in Kilikoglou, V., A. Hein and Y. Maniatis (eds.), Modern Trends in Scientific Studies on Ancient Ceramics. Papers Presented at the 5th European Meeting on Ancient Ceramics, Athens 1999, BAR International Series 1011. Oxford: Archaeopress, 1-8.

Elisa Alonso López  Chemical and Mineralogical Analyses of Ceramics: Looking For the Technological Choices
Petrographic and chemical analyses are key to understand the technological choices employed by ancient potters. Choosing the most relevant technique of analysis should be done in a case by case basis, independent of similarities between ceramic record and research questions. This paper explores how a technique appropriate for a specific case can be significantly less effective in another and why.
- Martineau, R., A.-V. Walter-Simonnet, B. Grobéty and M. Buatier 2007: Clay resources and technical choices for Neolithic pottery (Chalain, Jura, France): chemical, mineralogical and grain-size analyses, Archaeometry 49.1: 23–52.