Pottery
Pottery comprises objects made by shaping clay and hardening it with heat. It includes vessels, figurines, tiles, and fragments.
Clay: Fine-grained natural earth material that becomes plastic when wet and hardens when dried or fired. Its mineral composition and plasticity determine which forms can be shaped and how they survive firing.
Ceramics: Objects and materials made from inorganic, nonmetallic substances hardened by heat. Pottery is a major ceramic category, distinct from ceramic tiles, sculpture, and technical products.
Xianrendong Cave pottery: Early pottery fragments from Xianrendong Cave in southern China, dating to the Upper Paleolithic. These fragments document pottery-making long before agriculture in one of the earliest known traditions.
Amphora: An ancient Greek or Roman two-handled vessel used mainly to store and transport liquids or dry goods. Amphorae show how pottery enabled bulk storage and long-distance trade.
Minoan Kamares ware: A finely decorated Middle Minoan pottery style featuring light designs on dark grounds. Its vivid forms and decoration illustrate the refinement of Bronze Age Cretan pottery.
Coil building: A hand-forming technique that builds a vessel from stacked rolls of clay. Coiling makes vessel walls without a wheel and leaves construction traces archaeologists can recognize.
Earthenware: Porous pottery fired at relatively low temperatures, often made watertight with glaze. Its low firing temperature and porosity make it a common, recognizable pottery body.
Jōmon pottery: Pottery made by Japan’s Jōmon cultures, known for distinctive cord-marked surfaces. Its early dates and elaborate decoration show that pottery traditions developed in varied social settings.
Attic black-figure pottery: Athenian pottery decorated with dark figures against the red clay surface, especially in the sixth century BCE. Its vessels combine practical forms with mythological and everyday scenes.
Delftware: Tin-glazed earthenware made in the Netherlands and elsewhere, often decorated in blue and white. Delftware shows European potters adapting the appearance of imported Chinese porcelain.