Natural Science in Archaeology: Archaeological Ceramic Materials (PDF)

The text which follows is based largely on the personal experience of the authors. The examples used which concern archaeological material, thin sections of sherds and many of the case studies are for the most part those which we have developed ourselves. This experience. may seem biased when one thinks of the large experience of petrographic archaeology, and this is surely true, but it is a reflection of our observations which are more complete for the objectives we have in mind than most of the examples given in the literature. For example, we have access to initial sherds, photo- graphs, grain-size measurements and so forth for the same materials and we can present a specific archaeological context and problem using these data. Of course, there have been many studies on the same general subjects published elsewhere. As it turns out, our collective experience covers two of the major fields of investigation, the old (European) world and the new (American) one. It is evident that the problems are different in these two worlds. The contexts of production, distribution and use are different. The evolution of tech- niques is very different although covering similar time periods. These two view points are complementary and, we hope, will enrich the investigative methods and outlook of workers in both cultural areas.