Meaning in the making: The potter’s wheel at Phylakopi, Melos (Greece)

A proxy of potters’ throwing skill: ceramic vessels considered in terms of mechanical stress

“…Morphological typologies can, however, also be used for other purposes, such as evaluating the skills that potters acquired (e.g., Balfet, 1984;Berg, 2007). In the present framework, a skill is defined as "a form of behaviour acquired through learning" (Bril, 2002: 115), and its development regarded as determined by the social context in which it develops.…”

Drinking Performance and Politics in Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon

“…If the cylinder jars mimic Mesoamerican forms, their production using local materials and designs on a foreign shape may have helped to encourage acceptance of a new drinking ritual; at least one Spanish priest likely used a similar strategy in commissioning a Christian Communion chalice from a Jemez Pueblo potter to encourage acceptance of the foreign drinking ritual (Liebmann 2015:337). The cylinder jar may thus have been a consciously hybrid form, incorporating aspects of cacao consumption to the south with local craft traditions and thus combining the familiar with the exotic (mimesis and alterity [Taussig 1993]; see also Berg 2007:249). Both form and substance might have been viewed as holding positive sources of sacred power, in part through appropriation of that distinctive shape (Pugh 2009; Taussig 1993:19).…”

“…I employ the scholarship reviewed above to interpret the record of drinking forms, particularly that shared forms indicate a common tradition, while differences in form, color, and the presence of designs reflect identity negotiation. Where everyone shared the same basic form and vessels differ only in color or design, such negotiation likely involved the individual, but when segments of the larger population used distinctive forms, that negotiation shifted to the level of the group, suggesting competition (Berg 2007:249). Evidence for the nature of the individuals or groups associated with particular vessel forms comes from discard contexts.…”

Ceramic analysis in Greece

“…Greek assemblages for many years (Kiriatzi et al 1997;Knappett 1999;2004;Berg 2007). In 2012, Maria Choleva published an analytical reassessment of the first wheel-made pottery from prehistoric Lerna IV in the Argolid (ID114), distinguishing between wheel-made (wheel-throwing) and wheel-fashioning, with the latter corresponding to the use of RKE to modify the wall of a hand-built vessel (coiled roughout).…”