Classical Studies 2700B
Our class on 23rd February will begin with a review session devoted to last term's mid-term exam (posted on our course website). Please bring your copies and be prepared to ask questions.
Clay—Pottery: Techniques and Styles
Following on from last set of notes… pots were originally sun-dried, but v. fragile; (although oldest ex. of baked pottery is from Japan c. 10,000 BC, there is no info. about cultural sequences in that area). Pots were first baked in fires or piled on bonfires, a technique still used in 20th century Turkey; but such pots had v. short useful life. Different types of clay produced different kinds of pot: some are v. porous (advantages of this); serious cooking vessels required a harder surface: how this was produced.
Question of when pottery came into widespread use; probably not at nomadic stage—early pottery v. fragile and even baked pots not very portable. Earliest archaeological levels at permanent settlements in Turkey, Israel, Mesopotamia and Persia have no fired pottery. Firing seems to begin in the Middle East between c. 7,000 and 6,500 BC. Women may well have been the first potters. Reconstruction (slides) of basic process.
The baking of clay had many important consequences—not just pots and storage vessels; also bricks, lamps, troughs, moulds, loom-weights and toys. Huge increase also in hygiene. Pottery regarded as “gift from the Gods”: example of Khnum in Egypt.
General use of the kiln: c. 4,000 BC (oven certainly in general use by c. 6,000 BC). Importance of separating pots from fire area—why? After 4,000 BC standard form of kiln in Mesopotamia; similar situation in Egypt by 3,000 BC. Use of turntable in Near East by c. 3,500 BC—NOT a “potter’s wheel”, as we understand the term. How it worked—and in widespread use among the Greeks until early classical period. However, Greeks did make great improvements in pottery technology after c. 800 BC: main centres were Corinth and, a bit later, Athens. There were a number of technological innovations of Greek devising. Change in turntable > high-speed wheel, turned by potter’s assistant. Pottery was made and dried in air (“leather hard”) and then re-placed on wheel and shaved. Finally, the firing process, which seems to have been mainly an Athenian invention/discovery. Pottery was first painted in certain areas with a “clay slip” (I call it “goop”): what it was and how it was produced. This stuff in the firing process produced the black parts of finished pots, which were also scratched (“incised”) to produce detail in design on finished pot. Pots were fired in domed kiln to c. 1,000° C; at this point openings were all closed down > “reducing atmosphere”: surface of pots was blackened; when kiln cooled to c. 800° C, apertures were all re-opened; blackened areas of pots were re-oxydized and so became red again, except for areas painted with clay slip, which remained black. Main characteristics of Athenian pottery from c. 600 BC: from c. 600 to c. 530 the black-figure style was supreme; after c. 530 BC the red-figure style came to predominate (though black-figure never completely died out). One other major technological improvement in pottery-making involves the wheel. This concerns the strange, possibly mythical figure (c. 600 BC) of Anacharsis the Scythian: perhaps he suggested the changes to the existing fast wheel that became the “kick wheel”; its importance. But not all pots were made on the wheel: some examples of huge pots obviously NOT made this way.
METALS and METALLURGY—Introduction
As with clay, so with metals: the earliest uses so far discovered are ornaments rather than tools or weapons. Although “diffusionist” theories about cultural and technological advances are out of fashion nowadays (cf. megalithic monuments), there does seem, so far as Old World is concerned, to be one area of primary discovery/development in metal-working—the Near East; reasons for this. Beginnings probably with “native metals”, found in pure form—perhaps gold, silver or electrum. Oldest metal object worked by human hands is a copper ornament from c. 9,500 BC (discovered in 1960); utilitarian objects come 5,000 years later! So, for a long time, only native copper used by people and discovery that copper (or any other metal) lurked in various rocks was very slow in coming. Problem of working copper (by cold hammering) vs working of gold, silver and electrum was that copper becomes brittle with prolonged hammering; so first major metallurgical discovery was annealing (heating hammered metal to relieve stresses). Photomicrographs to illustrate this. Copper was beginning to be used quite widely by c. 6,000 BC; so “Copper Age”; produced widespread trade in, basically, nothing more than “copper trinkets”. Smelting not discovered until c. 3,800 BC (this date is v. approximate). How, where and when not at all clear: various (unsatisfactory) theories, including idea of development from production of so-called Egyptian faience (early attempt to synthesise the valuable semi-precious blue stone called “lapis lazuli”; not an Egyptian technique at all); description of this process, involving blow tubes and ceramic nozzles (tuyères). A possibly better, recent theory is that lead may have been the first metal to be smelted. At any rate, early copper smelting was slow and laborious.