Ancient and Historical Ceramics


Book Description

By stressing the congruence between cooking ceramics and tableware, and food and its consumption, this book offers a completely new view on ceramic science. It provides an interdisciplinary approach by linking ceramic science and engineering, archaeology, art history, and lifestyle. The selection of ceramic objects by the authors has been guided by historical significance, technological interest, aesthetic appeal, and mastery of craftsmanship. Readers are being acquainted with the science of ceramics and their technology, and with the artistry of ceramic masterpieces fashioned by ancient master potters. Ceramics treated in this book range from Near Eastern pottery to the Meissen porcelain wonders, from the Greek black-on-red and the Minoan Crete masterpieces to British bone china, and from Roman Terra Sigillata to the celadon stoneware and porcelain produced in the kilns of China, Japan and ancient Siam. Ancient and historical ceramic plates, pots, beakers and cups are juxtaposed with food preparations that likely may have been cooked in and served on these ceramic objects in the distant past. As it also presents ancient recipes, this book will also serve as a unique cook book. This generously illustrated book with hundreds of colour photographs and figures not only addresses professionals and students of archaeology, art history, and archaeometry working at all levels but anybody fascinated by historical ceramics, ceramic materials and production techniques of ancient ceramics.




Ceramics of Ancient America


Book Description

This is the first volume to bring together archaeology, anthropology, and art history in the analysis of pre-Columbian pottery. While previous research on ceramic artifacts has been divided by these three disciplines, this volume shows how integrating these approaches provides new understandings of many different aspects of Ancient American societies. Contributors from a variety of backgrounds in these fields explore what ceramics can reveal about ancient social dynamics, trade, ritual, politics, innovation, iconography, and regional styles. Essays identify supernatural and humanistic beliefs through formal analysis of Lower Mississippi Valley "Great Serpent" effigy vessels and Ecuadorian depictions of the human figure. They discuss the cultural identity conveyed by imagery such as Andean head motifs, and they analyze symmetry in designs from locations including the American Southwest. Chapters also take diachronic approaches—methods that track change over time—to ceramics from Mexico’s Tarascan State and the Valley of Oaxaca, as well as from Maya and Toltec societies. This volume provides a much-needed multidisciplinary synthesis of current scholarship on Ancient American ceramics. It is a model of how different research perspectives can together illuminate the relationship between these material artifacts and their broader human culture. Contributors: | Dean Arnold | George J. Bey III | Michael Carrasco | David Dye | James Farmer | Gary Feinman | Amy Hirshman | Yumi Park Huntington | Johanna Minich | Shelia Pozorski and Thomas Pozorski | Jeff Price | Sarahh Scher | Dorothy Washburn | Robert F. Wald




Ceramics and Civilization, Volume VII


Book Description

A collection of 14 papers presented in a one day symposia held at the 98th Annual Meeting of the American Ceramic Society, Indianapolis, Indiana, April 1996. The contributors explore the variability of kilns both chronologically and geographically, stressing new data to emerge from recent archeological excavations at sites in North, Central, and South America. Topics in firing structures, brick and tile making and glass production are explored in the areas of neolithic Greece, the third millennium Indus valley, imperial China, the US Southwest, coastal Peru, during the Classic period of Mesoamerica, and in Renaissance Italy. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Marajó


Book Description

Chief curator of Pre-Columbian art at the Denver Art Museum, Young-Sanchez presents a volume to accompany the September 2011 exhibition of 13 ceramic pieces from the Marajo culture, where the earliest ceramics in the Americas have been found. Archaeologist Schaan (Federal U. of Para) also reports her findings from excavations on Marajo Island on the symbolics of Marajoara social life. The catalogue is not indexed. Distributed by University of Oklahoma Press. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).




Ceramics, Cuisine and Culture


Book Description

The 23 papers presented here are the product of the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and approaches to the study of kitchen pottery between archaeologists, material scientists, historians and ethnoarchaeologists. They aim to set a vital but long-neglected category of evidence in its wider social, political and economic contexts. Structured around main themes concerning technical aspects of pottery production; cooking as socioeconomic practice; and changing tastes, culinary identities and cross-cultural encounters, a range of social economic and technological models are discussed on the basis of insights gained from the study of kitchen pottery production, use and evolution. Much discussion and work in the last decade has focussed on technical and social aspects of coarse ware and in particular kitchen ware. The chapters in this volume contribute to this debate, moving kitchen pottery beyond the Binfordian ‘technomic’ category and embracing a wider view, linking processualism, ceramic-ecology, behavioral schools, and ethnoarchaeology to research on historical developments and cultural transformations covering a broad geographical area of the Mediterranean region and spanning a long chronological sequence.




Ceramics of Iran


Book Description

A beautifully illustrated showcase of the rich and varied ceramic tradition of Iran Featuring a broad selection of objects from one of the most distinguished collections of Iranian art, this volume brings together over 1,000 years of Persian Islamic pottery. With more than 500 illustrations, authoritative technical treatises, and insightful commentary, Ceramics of Iran assembles a collection of rarely seen treasures from the Persian world and presents a collective history of its renowned ceramic tradition. Included among its comprehensive catalogue entries are numerous translations of the object’s inscriptions, providing readers with a richer and more detailed understanding of the cultural heritage from which these items are derived. In addition, the book contains new research and material from previously unknown sites. Featuring all new photography of nearly 250 objects, Ceramics of Iran brings the extraordinary contributions of Persian art into a wider historical context, along with a wealth of images to demonstrate the full scope of its intricate beauty.




History of Ancient Pottery


Book Description




Ancient Iranian Ceramics from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections


Book Description

The cultures of pre-Islamic Iran gave birth to a distinctive tradition of fine ceramics that spanned at least 5000 years, from the Neolithic period to the time of Roman activity in the Near East. This is a study of that remarkable tradition.




The Cambridge Companion to Historical Archaeology


Book Description

An introduction to the ways in which archaeologists study the recent past (c.AD 1500 to the present).




The Ceramic Sequence of the Holmul Region, Guatemala


Book Description

New and comprehensive sequencing of the ceramics in Guatemala's Holmul region provides answers to important questions in Maya archaeology. In this comprehensive and highly illustrated new study, authors Callaghan and Neivens de Estrada use type: variety-mode classification to define a ceramic sequence that spans approximately 1,600 years.