Pottery Date Quotes

Tedious as it may appear to some to dwell on the discovery of odds and ends that have, no doubt, been thrown away by the owner as rubbish ... yet it is by the study of such trivial details that Archaeology is mainly dependent for determining the date of earthworks. ... Next to coins fragments of pottery afford the most reliable of all evidence ...

It was the artifact of choice for a technique called seriation, which involved sorting objects by shape or style or some other formal feature and then ranging them in series, on the principle that things that are alike probably belong to the same period and that changes in style are often incremental. Like stratigraphy, seriation is a means of establishing relative chronologies; combined with the new technique of radiocarbon dating, it could be used to nail down whole stretches of cultural time. There was, however, no pottery in Hawai‘i, and Sinoto wondered what else could be used as a “diagnostic” artifact. The answer was fishhooks. Like

The 'astronomical chronology' is a framework of the scientific structure of Egyptian history and, consequently, of the history of the ancient world. . . . The specialists in astronomical chronology made their calculations and announced their expert results. The specialists in pottery took the results of the specialists in Sothic computation as a firm base on which to build. Specialists in the history of religion, philology, and history in general followed. Difficulties were swept away. . . .The readers of cuneiform borrow dates from the readers of hieroglyphics; the Bible exegetes from the archaeologist; the historians from all of them. Thus there came into existence an elaborate entrenched system that bears very little resemblance to the real past. . . . The Sothic scheme of ancient chronology of the world is built on this chronology.

Here, then, pottery has come to stand as a kind of history. Nor, in the case of the Badarians, does this equation seem unreasonable. For each one of their high-shining pots was conceived as a precious visual object, a kind of presentation. That the same few forms were carefully repeated down through generations also shows that each and every one of these precious vessels was part of a consciously maintained tradition. For both their makers and their users, the presentation which the potters offered was that of a mark of identity of a distinctive community, in the same way that today the corpse of someone buried with one of those same pots is known as a ‘Badarian’. It is this identification of a prehistoric community by pottery type and modern place name that provides the basis of a meta-history for late prehistory; a chronology of ceramic type and form which has recently been extended to take in all of Egypt’s history and which has become so all-pervasive that everything excavated within the orbit of the Nile is now dated and defined by the pottery that is its inevitable accompaniment.

It is no wonder that historians trace the birth of Western civilization to these jewels of the Aegean, Ionian, and Mediterranean seas. The Greek Isles are home to wide-ranging and far-reaching cultural traditions and mythic tales, not to mention the colorful history and unforgettable vistas that still draw thousands of tourists to the region every year. Minoan ruins stand alongside Byzantine churches and Crusader fortresses. Terra-cotta pots spilling over with hibiscus flowers adorn blinding-white stucco houses that reflect the sun’s dazzling light. Fishing villages perched upon craggy cliffs overlook clusters of colorful boats in island harbors. Centuries-old citrus and olive groves dot the hillsides. Lush vegetation and rocky shores meet isolated stretches of sand and an azure sea. Masts bob left and right on sailboats moored in secluded inlets. Each island is a world unto itself. Although outsiders and neighbors have inhabited, visited, and invaded these islands throughout the centuries, the islands’ rugged geography and small size have also ensured a certain isolation. In this environment, traditional ways of life thrive. The arts--pottery, glass blowing, gem carving, sculpture, and painting, among others--flourish here today, as contemporary craft artists keep alive techniques begun in antiquity. In the remote hilltop villages of Kárpathos, for example, artisans practice crafts that date back eons, and inhabitants speak a dialect close to ancient Greek. Today, to walk along the pebbled pathways of a traditional Greek mountain village or the marbled streets of an ancient acropolis is to step back in time. To meander at a leisurely pace through these island chains by boat is to be captivated by the same dramatic landscapes and enchanted islets that make the myths of ancient Greece so compelling. To witness the Mediterranean sun setting on the turquoise sea is to receive one of life’s greatest blessings.

However, to date, all attempts to decipher this script (which also appears on amulets, pottery, and other artifacts) have failed.

The Neolithic Egyptians buried in the cramped position. The early Babylonians buried at full length, as far as we know ... There is no trace of any early burial in Babylonia in the cramped position. The tombs at Warka (Erech) with cramped bodies in pottery coffins are of very late date.

In December of 2007 human bones including skulls, which have been radiocarbon dated back to between 1304 and 1424, were found in a museum in Concepción, Chile. These skulls were originally discovered on Isla Mocha, which is located 25 miles off the south-central coast of Chile. Since some of them have definite telltale signs of being Polynesian, the strong suggestion is that there was a pre-Columbian interaction between the local Mapuche people and the Polynesian seafarers. This contact is further supported by forensic evidence found near the Chilean site of “El Arenal,” which is a sandy dune approximately 3 miles inland from the coast. Pottery found in Ecuador, predating the arrival of Columbus in America, have markings similar to pottery found on the southernmost island of Kyushu, Japan. Radiocarbon dating has determined the date of organics in the clay that survived the firing, or from food or liquids stored in the pottery, to be 4500 years old with a possible variance of 200 to 500 years, thus predating Columbus by a wide margin. There is no reason to doubt these findings, which indicate that Asians and Polynesians sailed to all parts of the Pacific Ocean, including the vast continents of North and South America that border it on its far eastern side. It was always assumed that Spaniards introduced Chickens to the new continent; however the chicken bones found at the site also dated back to this era, proving that it was the Polynesians that first brought this edible bird with them! The proof is conclusive…. America was discovered prior to Columbus!

Although Sinai 361 is not dated, it is found among other inscriptions in the mines at Serâbît el Khadîm of the Egyptian New Kingdom. The pottery found in those mines was used during the reigns of Thutmose III (the Pharaoh who chased Moses out of Egypt) and Amenhotep II (the Pharaoh of the exodus) — so the pottery dates the inscription (c. 1446 B.C.).

the Japanese art of kintsugi, or “golden joinery,” a method of repairing cracked pottery with a vein of lacquer mixed with gold or silver. A plausible origin story dates this art to the fifteenth century, when Japanese shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa broke his favorite tea bowl and sent it back to China to be repaired. It was returned with ugly metal staples, prompting the shogun to order his craftsmen to find a more aesthetic means of repair. I love the idea that an accident can be an occasion to make something more delightful, not less so.

Dogfish Head makes a cacao beer called Theobroma that is intended to be a modern recreation of an ancient Olmec recipe. Based on residue analysis of pottery dating to 1400 BC, plus some hints from the reports of Spanish explorers, their recipe includes honey; chili pepper; vanilla; and annatto, a reddish spice derived from the achiote tree,

In the Indus Valley, the Nile Valley, and Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates, barley-wheat cuisine supported small cities by 3000 B.C.E., as millet cuisine supported them in the Yellow River Valley.19 The cuisine of Mesopotamia is the best known of the barley-wheat cuisines, already thousands of years old in 1000 B.C.E. It was prepared in cities and villages on the flat plain, hot and parched much of the year, partly marshy and covered with reeds, the home of fish and waterfowl, featureless except for the channels bringing water to irrigate the fields and the date palms lining the pathways between the fields. The abundance of rich soil and water for growing barley and wheat outweighed the lack of timber, building stone, and other resources. The poor, including foot soldiers, prisoners, construction workers, and servants, survived almost exclusively on barley dishes, receiving roughly made conical pottery bowls containing about two liters (a little over eight cups) of barley grains, porridge, or bread daily. They ate these with a little salt and dried fish. Their diet was so meager that a popular saying went: “When a poor man has died, do not try to revive him. When he had bread, he had no salt; when he had salt, he had no bread.”20