An Archaeological Look at Ceramic Pots

One of the indicators of early civilization is pottery. With people settling down in one centralized area and importing food from outlying farms, storage became a necessity. Woven containers of grass and reeds were most likely the first crafted vessels for dry goods, while the preserved stomaches of large grazing animals is good for liquid storage, but those all wear out very quickly. The practice of shaping mud with other materials and letting it harden in the sun to create building materials is a practice that helped keep humans out of the weather back in the stone age. A similar practice is still currently used by wasps, beavers and other such creatures. It's entirely possible that we learned it from them.

The invention of heating the dried clay to extremely high temperatures surely came about by accidentally dropping clay in some very hot fire, and then discovering its properties changed after it cooled. Afterwards, discovering all the uses of a substance that is easy to shape, which then fires to a stone-like substance surely came quickly.

The creation of pots or other ceramic vessels would have happened soon after ceramics came about. They are just too useful to be ignored. Early pots clearly had their creation at least partially to thank from the early grass and reed baskets, as evidenced by the coiled process by which they were made.

Early pots, as old as 14,000 before the present (BP) were created by coiling clay in a circular pattern around and around, pressed together and shaped with the fingers. The potters would have turned the vessel itself at the base, in order to try to get the vessel shaped correctly. The narrow base, common among pots made in this fashion, makes the pot much easier to turn during the creation process.

Soon, the creation of the pots was evolved to a point where they were placed on a plate or in a bowl, and built up from there, still using the clay coiling technique. The plate or bowl allowed the maker to turn the pot much more easily! Pots were smoothed out during the creation process either with the fingers, or using a rib or other bone. Pots are still crafted this way today in remote areas of Africa and Indo-China.

Ceramic technology didn't change much until the creation of the wheel in Mesopotamia around 6000 BP. The wheel allowed people to stop dragging things around, stop relying on pushing rafts on rolling logs, and to carry heavier loads. War chariots were invented, but potters found a much more peaceful use for the application of the wheel.

The very first potter's wheels were not much more than half a wheelshaft stuck upright in a stone base. These wheels would have had to have been turned by hand. They were not the kick wheels which would have been invented in later centuries. The process by which pots were made using these wheels can only be described as "fast coiling", as opposed to "throwing".

In the centuries to follow, pottery wheels do not undergo any huge changes. The Egyptians come up with pottery wheels that can be turned with the foot, but the materials available do not lend themselves to a free-spinning thrower's wheel as we know them today. There was too much friction involved, and they would slow down far too quickly.

In 16th century, Italy, we have records of bench high potters wheels with heavy kickwheels at the base. In the 19th century, with the industrial revolution, we have low friction pottery wheels in nearly the same design that would spin very fast. This was the true time for pot throwing!

The technique involved kicking the wheel to a fast speed, then throwing the clay and shaping it. When the wheel slowed down, you would stop shaping the clay and kick the wheel up again, and then resume shaping the clay in a cyclical action. This wheel is silent, fast, and heavy.

There are many people today who prefer this type of potter's wheel to the new, electric ones that do not need to be kicked, and run at a variable speed controlled with a dial. However, with new technology comes new techniques to explore. The new, constant speed potter's wheels are still very new. The techniques not as old as civilization as we know it! There are new refinements to be made, still.

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