Thesis (Ph. D.)--McMaster University, 2003. / Advisor: L. Finsten. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 148-163). Also available via World Wide Web.

The work deals with the issue of marks on pottery vessels in the Early and High Middle Ages in the present-day Klatovy district. An introductory chapter summarizes findings on the issue of the pottery and marking of the vessels. Furthermore, the work discusses settlement in a particular area (archaeological findings, secular and religious architecture, written records). The work also includes an experimental section, which summarizes the findings on the desk preparation, marking of the vessel sub-base issue and the pottery burning itself. A possibility of identification of identical remarks is discussed on the basis of a simple test. The thesis also contains maps, tables and illustrations of particular archaeological findings.

No description available.

The art of making pottery has long been recognized as a valuable educational activity, both for its cultural value and for the opportunity it presents for creative activity. However, the impression is prevalent among school teachers and administrators that the making of pottery requires the purchase of raw material as well as an expensive kiln. For this reason few schools have given pottery making a place in school activities. Experiments with Texas clays have shown conclusively that pottery making is a comparatively simple and inexpensive undertaking. The purpose of this study is to present and evaluate these experiments so that other Texas teachers may utilize them in their work, especially in the elementary art classes of the public schools.

This study has attempted to examine third and fourth century pottery supply in northern England together with other aspects of pottery assemblages in the region. The pottery kilns of the East Yorkshire industries have been characterised by neutron activation analysis which has proved reasonably successful in discriminating between them. Neutron activation analysis has also been utilised to attempt to check visually identified fabric groups and to help isolate other fabrics. This has been of varying success. Quantified data has been collected from 15 sites across the north and the limited published quantitative data have been utilised to examine the distribution, marketing and competition between fabric types in the region. Examination of functional variations through time between different types of site has also been undertaken as has that of variations in the quantity of finewares through time and between different types of site together with an attempt at quantifying decoration and examining trends in this. Pottery supply to the northern frontier area would seem to have been organised by different mechanisms in different periods. In the second century much of the pottery used on the frontier would appear to have been produced by the military themselves whilst in the third century and earlier fourth century free market mechanisms would seem to have operated, but in the late fourth-early fifth centuries some form of 'military contract' would appear to have taken over supply. Functional variations between different types of site have been identified with rural sites, turrets and Signal Stations sharing a major emphasis on the jar as the basic ceramic form and more complex settlement types having more diversified functional groups. The distribution of finewares also seems to be concentrated on more complex settlement types. It is apparent that there are consistent differences between the East Yorkshire region and the rest of the study area which may well reflect differences extending back into the Iron Age. Similarly there seem to be indications of some 'de-Romanisation' in late Roman assemblages but this does not develop in the fifth century, when nearly all the strands of evidence of Romano-British material culture disappear very rapidly. / Science and Engineering Research Council

The oeuvre of the Kalahari Studio (Cape Town), Drostdy Ware (a division of Grahamstown Pottery, Grahamstown) and Crescent Potteries (Krugersdorp) is investigated within the historical context of the 1950s, a watershed period that witnessed crucial developments in South African cultural and political history. This dissertation elucidates the historical development, key personnel, the ceramics, as well as relevant technical information related to the Kalahari Studio, Drostdy Ware and Crescent Potteries. This dissertation analyses the broader socio-political and ideological paradigms that framed South African art-making, as well as the international design trends that influenced the local studio ceramics sector. The establishment and demise of the South African studio ceramics industry and requests for tariff protection were considered within this context. Significant primary research was conducted into the present status of South African studio ceramics from the 1950s in the collections of our heritage institutions. Wares of all three of the studios reveal a predilection for figurative imagery, especially images of indigenous African women and iconography derived from reproductions of Southern San parietal art. Imagery of African women is considered within the framework of the native study genre in South African painting, sculpture and photography from 1800-1950 and Africana ceramics from 1910-1950. Images of San parietal art are investigated within their historical context of a growing public and academic interest in the Bushmen and a surge in publications containing reproductions of San parietal art. Some images of African women and San parietal art conform to pejorative and theoretically problematic modernist cannons of the'other', while some are subversive and undermine the dominant pictorial and ideological artistic conventions. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2000.

Thesis (M.A.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Africa, 2001.

This ethnoarchaeological study explores the economics of pottery production and distribution in the Kalinga village of Dalupa in the northern Philippines. For individual Dalupa potters, pottery production is a part-time craft specialization that fits around an intensive cultivation schedule. For the regional economic system in which Dalupa participates, pottery production is a community-based specialization that provides numerous settlements with much-needed goods. This model of community-based specialization, in which households and communities pursue multiple types of productive specialization, is common among traditional societies that anthropologists study. Yet surprisingly little is known about conditions under which village-based specialization develops. Still less is known about the factors that encourage a part-time production system to evolve into a full-time system, since ethnographic examples indicate that productive intensification characterizes a wide range of societies. Historical and social contexts of Dalupa ceramic production are explored as they affect the nature of its production system. Resource access and production parameters that archaeologists employ (e.g., scale, intensity) are influenced by capitalist penetration into the area, social relations, and the level of tribal warfare. Household pottery production scale is affected by the availability of alternative income-generating activities, which fluctuate in response to externally-imposed pressures toward development in the Cordillera highlands. Examination of Dalupa production scale (i.e., levels of inputs and outputs) over an annual cycle reveals that variability within the producer work force is related to differential economic pressures. Analyses of Dalupa production intensity (or the relative level of inputs per production entity) concentrate on dimensional variability of cooking pots. Comparisons at the inter-community and intra-community level evaluate widely-held assumptions regarding the relationship between production intensity and product standardization. This ethnoarchaeological case study provides detailed information on the relationship between production scale and distributional range in small-scale systems. Economic personalism operates in all aspects of the Dalupa pottery exchange network. Dalupa ceramics circulate within a multi-centric economy. These two processes affect the formal variation in the material record of pottery distribution. Investigating both production and distribution processes within a single economic system illuminates our understanding of prehistoric pottery economics.

Disasters are prevalent phenomena in the human experience and have played a formative role in shaping world cultures. Contemporary and popular conceptions of disasters as events, such as hurricanes, droughts, or earthquakes, fail to fully capture the social dimensions of these complex processes. Building on theoretical models and research in sociology, geography, and anthropology, this research explores one community's experience with and reaction to disaster over the longer-term--primarily through the lens of archaeology. The anthropology of disaster recognizes that these processes have the potential to affect every facet of human life, including biological, technological, ritual, political, social, and economic aspects of a society. How groups react to and cope with these processes dramatically shapes their cultural histories and in some instances their cultural identities. Using theoretical assumptions from the anthropology of technology, my research explores the social impacts of disaster at community and sub-community levels by drawing on method, theory, and information from across subdisciplinary boundaries to incorporate archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic datasets to better understand the entire disaster process or cycle. Specifically, I investigate how Hidatsa potters located near the Knife River of North Dakota responded to the smallpox epidemics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and how these women maintained or modified their daily practice in light of these catastrophes. In addition, I examine oral tradition and contemporary discourse on these subjects to explore the lasting legacies and impacts of catastrophe. The objective of my research is to contribute new theory to the anthropology of disaster by examining disasters over the long-term, investigating the relationship between disaster and motivations for the production or reproduction of material culture--the focus of most archaeological studies--and by exploring the role of materiality and traditional technology in coping strategies.