Pottery

Pottery is a ceramic material, where the clay mixed with other minerals is formed into vessels, generally with utilitarian purposes in mind. The production of pottery is a process where wet clay is shaped and allowed to dry. The formed clay, or piece, may be "bisque fired" in a kiln to induce permanent changes that result in increased mechanical strength, and then fired a second time after adding a glaze or a piece may be once fired by applying appropriate glaze to the dry unfired clay and firing in one cycle.

Types Of Pottery

Aesthetic and artistic considerations have often been part of the formation of the pottery vessels, however modern mass production techniques have replaced the traditional role of pottery with mechanized reproduction, which has in turn caused the potter to be more focused on the aesthetic than the utilitarian in industrialized nations.

Traditionally, different world regions have produced different types of clay, also called bodies, with the potter digging clay out of natural banks in his own 'back yard.' In modern times, potters will often combine different clays and minerals to produce clay bodies suited to their specific purposes.

Pottery that is fired at temperatures in the 800 to 1200 °C range, which does not vitrify in the kiln but remains slightly porous is often called earthenware or terra cotta. Clay formulated to be fired at higher temperatures, which is partially vitrified is called stoneware. Fine earthenware with a white tin glaze is known as faience. Porcelain is a very refined, smooth, white body that, when fired to vitrification, can have translucent qualities. Ceramic technology is used for items such as electronic parts and Space Shuttle tiles.

History

Icipient Jomon pottery (10,000-8,000 BC), Tokyo National Museum, Japan.Pottery is an ancient technology, and is one of the key technologies in the formation of civilization. The creation of pottery has been advanced as new tools became available to the potter, such as the electric potter's wheel and the electric kiln. Potters also take advantage of more modern innovations in the fields of chemistry and plastics.

Broken pottery in archaeological sites, called potsherds, help identify the resident culture and date the stratum, by the formation style and decoration. The relative chronologies based on pottery are essential for dating the remains of non-literate cultures and help in the dating of some historic cultures as well.

Palaeolithic Pottery

Pottery objects, dated to the late Palaeolithic (Magdalenian, have been found in Europe. The most famous of these clay objects is the "Venus" of Dolni Vestonice. These cult like objects have long been considered among the oldest pottery. Pottery found in the Japanese islands has been dated, by uncalibrated radiocarbon dating, to around the 11th millennium BC, in the Japanese Palaeolithic at the beginning of the Jomon period.

Recently underwater research in Gulf of Cambay, India revealed sun dried pottery dating from 30,000 BP(article in 6 parts, Badrinarayan 2005). These objects may be good candidates for the earliest pottery in the world.

Neolithic Pottery

The earliest Neolithic Pottery is from Gulf of Cambay, India, about 10000 years Before Present. In Palestine, Syria, and south-eastern Turkey, the earliest finds of clay pots date from Neolithic times, around the 8th millennium BC (black burnished ware). Before that, clay had been used to make statuettes of humans and animals that were sometimes burned as well. In the preceding pre-pottery Neolithic, vessels made of stone, gypsum, and burnt lime (vaiselles blanches or white ware) had been used. Sometimes a mixture of clay and lime was used-not very successfully-in the earliest pottery.