Ceramic distribution, migration and cultural interaction among late prehistoric (ca. 1300-200B.P.) hunter-gatherers in the San Diego region, Southern California

The composition of 40 pottery sherds from three separate excavation units at the Late Prehistoric (ca. 1300-200B.P.) hunter-gatherer habitation site of Mine Wash (CA-SDI-813) in eastern San Diego County has been characterised by a combination of thin section petrography and geochemistry and compared to a database of raw materials and additional ceramic artefacts from across the region. This reveals a compositionally diverse pottery assemblage that contains ceramics from several non-local sources in the Colorado Desert to the east and the nearby Peninsular Range mountains to the west. Possible cultural mechanisms for the movement of pottery to Mine Wash are assessed, including seasonal migration between different landscape zones along ethnohistoric trails, trade and exchange, and settlement shift due to subsistence stress. Additionally, intra-site compositional variation in ceramics across the three excavation units is considered as evidence for the co-habitation of the site by several different social groups of hunter-gatherers

Origins and distribution of hellenistic and late republican transport amphorae in the dalmatian region and its implications for adriatic trade and economy

The presence of Hellenistic and Late Republican transport amphorae at numerous sites along the Adriatic and within shipwrecks off the coast indicates that intense trade and/or exchange in commodities such as olive oil and wine took place in this region from the fourth until the first century BC. The details of this commercial activity are nevertheless unclear in terms of the sources, destinations, and routes via which transport containers and their contents were circulated. The present study brings compositional data to bear on this topic by analysing petrographically and geochemically 248 amphorae sherds from 15 sites along the Dalmatian coast of present-day Croatia, including production sites, places of consumption, and shipwrecks. This revealed the existence of several larger amphora workshops whose amphorae were used to export goods to Dalmatia during the fourth and third centuries BC. They were involved in direct trade or through intermediaries in the redistribution centres. In the second and first centuries BC, only one workshop supplied amphorae in the region, which is probably the Dalmatian town of Issa. Aspects of the regional and inter-regional distribution and redistribution of amphorae from these workshops have been reconstructed, as well as changes within the trading system over time

Prehistoric Settlement, Mobility and Societal Structure in the Peak District National Park: New Evidence from Ceramic Compositional Analysis

Detailed compositional and technological analysis of a large assemblage of prehistoric ceramics from numerous sites situated within the Peak District National Park has been used to explore the settlement patterns, societal structure, mobility and interaction of the populations that inhabited this area during the Early Bronze Age to Early Iron Age. A surprising pattern emerges of the widespread dominance of a single, geographically restricted temper type, which appears to have been transported and mixed with locally procured clay and used to produce pottery at numerous different sites. The distribution of this and several other compositional groups are defined via thin-section petrography and compared to raw material field samples. The resulting patterns are used to assess the validity of previous theories about prehistoric life in this region during the third to first millennia bc

Ceramic Petrography and the Reconstruction of Hunter-Gatherer Craft Technology in Late Prehistoric Southern California

Plain, undecorated ceramic sherds are a common component of archaeological assemblages from villages, temporary camps and resource processing sites across southernmost California (Figure 1). Ceramic technology arrived in this area during the last 1000-1300 years (Laylander, 1992; Campbell, 1999, p. 119; Griset 1996) and perhaps as recently as 1450-1500 AD in western San Diego County, where its appearance is used as a chronological marker for the Late Prehistoric period. Based on archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence, indigenous societies of the San Diego area practiced a mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle with seasonal movements across environmental zones to exploit a range of plant, animal and geological resources. The manufacture and use of ceramics by these groups thus provides another example, within a growing corpus of recently studied cases (e.g. Sassaman, 1993, 2000; Eerkens et al., 2002; Eerkens, 2003; Skibo and Schiffer, 2008; Thompson et al., 2008) of pottery technology among hunter-gatherers

Uruk expansion or integrated development? A petrographic and geochemical perspective from Gurga Chiya, Iraqi Kurdistan

The Late Chalcolithic (LC; c.4500-3100BCE) was an important period in the developmental history of ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, north-eastern Syria and south-eastern Turkey). New forms of socio-political and economic organisation are observed, characterised by household/settlement hierarchies, centralised production, craft specialization and redistribution. The Uruk Phenomenon of the latter 4th millennium BCE (LC3-5 in northern Mesopotamia and Middle-Late Uruk Period in southern Mesopotamia) coincides with the world’s first urban societies in northern and southern Mesopotamia. This phenomenon includes the extension of long-distance trade and the spread of material culture (including pottery), architectural elements and administrative devices from southern Iraq across Mesopotamia. Nevertheless, the reasons for the spread of this material culture are a major point of contention in archaeological debate. Within this paper, we apply a combined quantitative and qualitative methods featuring macroscopic observations, ceramic petrography and pXRF to a selection of 38 pottery sherds from Gurga Chiya, a small site located within the Shahrizor Plain, Iraqi Kurdistan. Results demonstrate that the pottery analysed was all locally produced, perhaps at Gurga Chiya itself. Potential reasons for the transmission of the Uruk Phenomenon and its appearance at Gurga Chiya are discussed. We suggest that frequent, low-level contacts between Gurga Chiya and communities of the Shahrizor and adjacent regions as a prospective reason for the transmission of this cultural package into the region

To the vicinity and beyond! Production, distribution and trade of cooking greywares in medieval Catalonia, Spain

Utilitarian greyware ceramics are one of the most abundant artefacts at rural sites in Medieval Catalonia, Spain, and were manufactured by numerous long-lived production centres. The stylistic homogeneity of this class of pottery has traditionally restricted its contribution to the archaeological interpretation of the region. However, recent scientific analyses of excavated kiln sites are offering new perspectives via the establishment of compositional reference groups for greyware ceramics. Using one such dataset, from the large workshop of Cabrera d’Anoia, this paper examines the distribution and consumption of utilitarian grey pottery at 25 Medieval sites across Catalonia. The study reveals a pattern of several regional production centres distributing their goods to small villages within the surrounding countryside and, in some cases, competing for rural markets. This is interpreted in terms of the mechanisms by which greyware pottery was distributed, as well as the socio-political and religious influences on its supply and demand in Medieval Catalonia

Scientific Preparations of Archaeological Ceramics Status, Value and Long Term Future

Thin sections, resin blocks, pressed pellets, fused beads, milled powders, solutions and digested residues are several key sample formats used in the invasive scientific analysis of ancient ceramics. They are crucial tools that enable researchers to characterise the mineralogical, geochemical, molecular and microstructural composition of pottery and other ceramic artefacts, in order to interpret their raw materials, manufacturing technology, production locations and functions. Despite the importance of such preparations, key issues about their status, such as whether they are still artefacts or not, who owns them and where they should reside after analysis, are rarely addressed in the archaeological or archaeometric literature. These questions have implications for the long-term future of thin sections, resin blocks and other sample formats, as well as their accessibility for future research. The present paper highlights the above problem and assess the roles, perspectives and needs of ceramic analysts, field archaeologists, commercial units, curators, policy makers, professional bodies, special interest groups and funding agencies. Finally, guidelines are put forward that can be taken into account when deciding on the value and research potential of scientific specimens of archaeological ceramics, as well as strategies for their curation

A glass workshop in ‘Aqir, Israel and a new type of compositional contamination

Materials associated with a secondary workshop of early Byzantine date (4th-5th centuries) were unearthed in excavations by the Israel Antiquities Authority in ‘Aqir, central Israel. Fragments of furnace structure, production debris and glass vessels have been analysed by scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray analysis (SEM-EDS) and thin-section petrography. The results suggest that the workshop melted raw glass chunks of similar composition to the primary glass made at Apollonia, Israel, to produce secondary glass products. Some glass vessels associated with the furnace are of different composition, and some of these may represent material brought in as cullet for recycling. The furnace was built with ceramic bricks comprising alluvial-type clay with inclusions of quartz sand, probably added as temper. It was fired by potash-rich fuel to approximately 1100°C. Lime mortar was used either to cement the gaps between mudbricks or to line the furnace as a parting layer, and it has introduced a previously unrecognised type of contamination in glass of the period, mainly of Fe2O3 and CaO. The contamination may be identified in glass vessel assemblages elsewhere but is not ubiquitous. As its origin relates to the furnace structure, its occurrence may depend upon chronology or geography and further work is needed to resolve this issue

Pyrotechnological connections? Re-investigating the link between pottery firing technology and the origins of metallurgy in the Vinča Culture, Serbia

The present paper re-examines the purported relationship between Late Neolithic/Early Chalcolithic pottery firing technology and the world's earliest recorded copper metallurgy at two Serbian Vinča culture sites, Belovode and Pločnik (c. 5350 to 4600 BC). A total of eighty-eight well-dated sherds including dark-burnished and graphite-painted pottery that originate across this period have been analysed using a multi-pronged scientific approach in order to reconstruct the raw materials and firing conditions that were necessary for the production of these decorative styles. This is then compared to the pyrotechnological requirements and chronology of copper smelting in order to shed new light on the assumed, yet rarely investigated, hypothesis that advances in pottery firing technology in the late 6th and early 5th millennia BC Balkans were an important precursor for the emergence of metallurgy in this region at around 5000 BC. The results of this study and the recent literature indicate that the ability to exert sufficiently close control over the redox atmosphere in a two-step firing process necessary to produce graphite-painted pottery could indeed link these two crafts. However, graphite-painted pottery and metallurgy emerge at around the same time, both benefitting from the pre-existing experience with dark-burnished pottery and an increasing focus on aesthetics and exotic minerals. Thus, they appear as related technologies, but not as one being the precursor to the other