Archaeology of Pottery
For week 6 in ANT2100 we discussed The Archaeology of Pottery. The first step was identifying the difference between Pottery and Ceramics. Pottery is prehistoric, low-fired at less than 1200C, non-vitrified, coarse/porous and mostly unglazed. Ceramics on the other hand are modern, fired at 1200C or more, vitrified, and are usually glazed. Pottery can give us insights to cultural history, population size, site function, subsistence, migration/trade/exchange, and ideology. We discussed the methodology of cataloging pottery to include sorting and counting sherds, recording thickness/wight/paste type/surface treatment, recording body/base/or rim, creating vessel lots, and comparing sherd count to MVC. We also discussed how to estimate rim diameter and vessel form as well as identifying shapes/features and Basal (or base) Features. We learned that The Venus of Dolni Vestonice, from the Czech Republic, may be the oldest clay-fired objects made as well as the fragments of pottery found in southern China that date back 20,000 years and is the world's oldest known. Some of the oldest pottery in North America was located in Stallings Island, Georgia and predates farming in that region by several millennia. We discussed Tempering pottery, the addition of other materials (fiber, sand, shell, etc.) to the clay to improve work ability, reduce shrinking/cracking, and increase thermal shock resistance. We learned about different Finishing Techniques (smoothing, incising, stamping, cord marking, punctuating.....) to add additional thermal shock resistance, cooling/heating effectiveness, and reprehensibility. We learned about Firing that cures and hardens the clay into a usable vessel and the earliest kilns date back to 7000BC Iran, where Southeaster Indigenous people would have fired their pottery in bonfires. We also discussed some of the pottery styles we could use such as Early Archaic, Deptford, Swift Creek, Weeden Island, Fort Walton, and Pensacola.
We were back out on Captain's corner on Saturday. We moved into the backyard and began two new transects. We found some artifacts, but not as many as we were hoping. We started hitting the water table at around 80-90cm which could mean that there was another spring behind the property that has long been covered over. As we move closer to the house this weekend, hopefully we will find more that links the property to Blood.
These are the two articles that I reviewed for this assignment:
Are These the World’s First Baby Bottles?
Dunne, J. (2019, Oct 19) Are These the World’s First Baby Bottles? https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/neolithic-parenting-baby-bottles/
This article discusses that just like today, people were supplementing animal milk for breast milk for their children more than 5000 years ago. This milk may have been stored in clay vessels that were found in Germany, and these vessels appear to have become more popular through the Bronze and Iron ages in Europe. Using organic residue analysis, a delicate drill was used to produce enough ceramic powder that could be treated to extract lipids. It was found that the lipids were from cow, sheep or goat milk and the evidence suggests that it was used as a supplemental food during the weaning process. This evidence has been used to isolate the time frame for the dawn of agriculture and the "Neolithic demographic transition".
I found it fascinating that despite huge advancements in technology, we still use 5000 year old techniques of nutrition for our children. I never took into account what the mortality rate among children must have been before the advent of pasteurization. The vessels are reminiscent of baby bottles, especially with the nipple for drinking from, and the design was even used by the ancient Greeks and Romans.
How Pottery Offers Glimpses Into Ancient Foodways
Wilke, C. (2021, Sept 8) How Pottery Offers Glimpses Into Ancient Foodways https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/pottery-ancient-food/
This article is very similar to the above article I reviewed, even starting out discussing ancient pottery baby bottles from the Bronze and Iron Ages and how the retrieval of lipids from the pottery suggests that mothers were using animal milk for weaning or nutritional supplementation. The article follows Julie Dunne, a biomolecular archaeologist, and how she is using similar techniques to identify microbes and remnants of molecules from ancient potter to identify what we were eating at the time. She discusses that early archaeology focused on museum worthy artifacts but neglected to see the bigger picture, what was life like for everyone at that time.
I find it fascinating that we can take a piece of pottery that is thousands of years old and with modern technology we can identify exactly what type of food was prepared in that vessel. We are able to identify what ingredients were used, such as cabbage in medieval stews or fats left behind from the processing of cheese, or pots that were used to bake breads. Scientists are now able to look at the pottery from different regions of the globe and identify exactly what each culture was eating, the ingredients they used, and the methods and techniques they used to prepare them.
Pottery Lab
For this assignment I chose to recreate Late Archaic Pottery, specifically the Orange Series. This pottery is specific to the Atlantic coast of Florida from around 1200 to 500 B.C. The appearance of this new technology is believed to be the transition between Archaic hunting/gathering society and the beginning of villages/communities that depended on agriculture. Sites have been located in Canaveral National Seashore, Fort Matanzas National Monument, and Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve. This pottery would have been part of the Timucuan and Tequesta cultures. Keeping somewhat with the traditional style my pottery will be fiber tempered, however without a source of traditional Spanish Moss near my house I opted to try dried Sphagnum Moss which I had lying around. In keeping with the Late Archaic style my surface treatment will be punctacted.
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