Slab Construction

A method of producing ceramics in which large flat slabs of clay are made and then joined and shaped into the desired item. A primary forming technique for the construction of large or rectilinear pottery vessels from flat pieces of the body that are joined along seams.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Slab Construction

Krater

Ancient Greek vessel used for diluting wine with water. It usually stood on a tripod in the dining room, where wine was mixed. Kraters were made of metal or pottery and were often painted or elaborately ornamented. In Homer's "Iliad" the prize offered by Achilles for the foot race at Patroclus' f...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Krater

St. Remy Ware

Fine pottery, often with relief decoration, in a white fabric with a green or yellow (lead) glaze, made at St-Remy-en-Rollat, near Vichy. Small jars, bowls, and flagons were imported into Britain in the 1st century. Imitations were made in Britain up to the mid 2nd century.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

St. Remy Ware

Brownware

A brown-glazed earthenware; also, pottery that fires to a brown or reddish color.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Brownware

Pit-Comb Ware

A coarse pottery with deep round-based bowls decorated with pits and comb impressions and used in the circumpolar cultures of the forest zone of northeast Europe. The area includes that around the southern Baltic and glacial outwash of central and eastern Poland. Its makers were probably hunters ...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Pit-Comb Ware

Whitby-Type Ware

Middle Saxon style of pottery made using a slow-turning potter's wheel at workshops around Whitby in North Yorkshire, England.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Whitby-Type Ware

La Gorge-Meillet

Rich Iron Age chariot burial of the Marnian culture, Marne, France. The body of a youth is accompanied by sword, bronze helmet, gold items, spearheads, wheelmade pottery vessels, and an Etruscan bronze flagon. It is dated to La Tène c 475-450 BC.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

La Gorge-Meillet

Cape Coastal Ware

A Stone Age pottery style from the coast of southern Namibia to eastern Cape Province, South Africa, after c 1600 BP. It is characterized by point-based pots.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Cape Coastal Ware

Bocca Quadrata

A Middle Neolithic culture of northern Italy characterized by pottery vessels with rounded bodies and square mouths, decorated with incised geometric motifs.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Bocca Quadrata

Olive Jar

A type of pottery vessel used to ship olives and wine (and other commodities) from Spain; commonly found in Spanish colonial archaeological sites.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Olive Jar

Fineware

Good-quality pottery that has a fine textured fabric, relatively thin walls, and is usually tableware or for personal use. Fineware may be decorated, but above all stands out within the overall repertoire of material used by a community in being of superior quality.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Fineware

Paestan Pottery

South Italian pottery made at Paestum, some signed by the craftsmen, starting in the mid-4th century BC.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Paestan Pottery

Food Vessel

One of the two main cultures of the Bronze Age; the name given to a series of pottery vessels in northern Britain, Scotland, and Ireland. It was a prototype derived from that of the Beaker Folk and other Neolithic cultures. The food vessel culture people were hunters and farmers, raising sheep an...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Food Vessel

Post-Deverel-Rimbury Ware

Various styles of pottery circulating in southern England from the first half of the 1st millennium BC, superseding the previously common and widespread Deverel-Rimbury traditions. Post-Deverel-Rimbury wares include a fineware component comprising mainly thin-walled plain jars, bowls, and cups, t...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Post-Deverel-Rimbury Ware

Argonne Ware

Pottery type of the 4th century AD, usually with a red color-coat. Vessels are decorated with horizontal bands of impressed geometric patterns, executed with a roller stamp. The ware was made in the Argonne in northeast Gaul. Its distribution in Britain is mainly confined to the south and southea...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Argonne Ware

Sue Ware

Bluish-gray high-fired pottery of the Kofun, Nara, and Heian periods in Japan (5th-14th centuries AD), derived from Kaya pottery of the Old Silla period in Korea. A large number of vessels were made on a mechanical wheel, and fired in a kiln at about 1100 degrees C; the blue-gray color resulting ...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery, Periods

Sue Ware

Campanian Pottery

A type of South Italian pottery. Productions seems to have started before the middle of the 4th century BC, perhaps under the influence of Sicilian pottery. There seem to have been three main centers of production: two at Capua and one at Cumae. Late in its production it seems to draw inspiration...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Campanian Pottery

Attic Black-Figure Ware

Type of pottery manufactured in the Attica region of southern Greece from about 720 BC. Vase-painters in Athens and Corinth developed a characteristic style of decoration in which one or more friezes of human and animal figures are presented in silhouette in black against a red ground. The deline...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Attic Black-Figure Ware

Askos

An assymetric vessel, often squat and duck-shaped, with an off-center mouth, convex top, and single arching handle. It was originally shaped like a leather bottle (uter) for holding water, oil, or wine. Some example have two mouths, one for filling and one for emptying, and others are quite unbal...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Askos

Impressed Ware

The earliest Neolithic pottery of the Mediterranean area, with decoration impressed into the clay by sticks, combs, fingernails, or seashells, from before 6000 BC to around 4000 BC (though till later in North Africa). The pottery itself was characterized as having simple round-bottomed shapes. Th...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Impressed Ware

Lacquer Ware

Ornate wooden domestic and funerary vessels common in China from the Shang Dynasty (14th century BC) onwards, manufactured by repeatedly coating a wooden or fabric pre-form with lacquer in order to build up a rich shiny surface.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Lacquer Ware

Cornish Urn

Type of middle Bronze Age pottery vessels found in the extreme southwest of Britain and dating to the 2nd millennium BC. Generally rather barrel-shaped in profile and often with a highly decorated upper body, these large vessels commonly have strap handles. The decoration includes herringbone and...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Cornish Urn

Cheddar Ware

A regional type of late Saxon pottery (Saxo-Norman pottery) dating to the period AD 850 to AD 1150 manufactured in central Somerset, England.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Cheddar Ware

Thericleian Ware

A type of decoration of the 5th-3rd centuries BC used on silver, terebinth wood (pistachio), and clay. It is characterized by ribbing and a black color. Therikles, a Corinthian potter, was said to have developed the technique.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Thericleian Ware

Toprakkale Complex

Site on Lake Van, eastern Anatolia (Turkey), which was the center of the Urartian state, c 850-600 BC. There is a large temple complex which was a Urartian fortress, storerooms, and residential area, including bronze, carved ivory, and silk artifacts. There are other temples, storerooms, etc. in ...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Toprakkale Complex