Herb the Potsherd: #clay

Sunday, November 22, 2015

What Am I?

Now that archaeologists uncovered me... what next?

A good place to start would be with what I even am. As you know, I'm Herb the potsherd, but what does that really mean?

Pottery is made out of clay. Clay is made out of very small pieces of rock, usually mixed with other larger pieces of rock and pieces of things like shells, sand, and minerals. In nature, clay can look like this:

Image

I'm not crazy, I promise! I'm sure you're wondering how I came from this... wonder no more!

Once a potter, or anyone with hands and a fire, got the clay, they still had to add more. Clay can be shaped when it is wet, but it also is very sticky because it loves to suck up water. So, to make it less sticky, straw, ash, sand, or even poop is added! These don't suck up water, so they make the clay the perfect mix of wet but shapeable!

Now, shaping.

Pots can be made by hand, but not me! I was made on a potter's wheel, just a spinning table top! The potter used one hand to spin the table, and one hand to shape the pot. This process is represented by this Egyptian figurine:

Image

As potters made more pottery and communicated more, the pottery and the pottery making process became more similar. However, different areas had different styles also.

Pottery making is represented in Egyptian art, such as here:

Image

On the table, the potter would spin the table as the clay was shaped and pulled. Using a pottery wheel leaves special marks, the biggest being a spiral of ridges that handmade pots do not have. They can be very regular, which would have only been possible on a wheel. These type of ridges can be seen here:

THIS ONE NEEDS A CITATION

Can you see the ridges? They perfectly beautiful that they couldn't have been done without a wheel! And a master potter of course!

With the basic shape done, handmade handles and other decoration were added!

Ready to be fired???

Uh no!!!!

When pottery is wet, there is a lot of air in it. And when pottery is fired with air in it... it EXPLODES.

Image

What a waste of time!

To make sure a perfect pot doesn't explode, it needs to air dry before it can be fired, so there are no air bubbles in the clay. It also needs to dry slowly, because if clay dries too fast, it can crack. Longer process than you thought?

But, alas! It's finally time to be fired!

I bet you're wondering why I'm being fired, when I already said that I am dry?

Well, drying takes out most of the water from me, but there is still water tightly bonded within my particles that air just can't get to. So, firing takes out all of the remaining water that is too tightly packed in my particles. This makes me super hard.

I was fired at a perfect temperature for just the right amount of time, which allowed me to come out this uniform, perfect color.

If I was fired for too long at too high of a temperature, I would have slumped over. However, I needed to be fired long enough for my particles to get nice and close together so that they could be super strong. If I had a very dark core, that would have meant I wasn't fired long enough at a high enough temperature.

Because I turned out this perfect color, I know that I was fired perfectly. What a skilled potter I had!

Making Me Whole

You all know who I am, Herb the pot herd, but what if I wasn't just a sherd anymore?

Archaeologists actually have the ability to try to make me whole again!

I wasn't found by myself, I was found with lots of other pieces. Some of them belonged to my pot, but others didn't. Archaeologists had to take all of us, and figure out who belonged to who and how we all fit together. So, they have a way to take messes like this:

Image

And turn them into pots that look like this:

Image

They do this mostly by looking for pieces that are called diagnostics. These pieces of things like rims and handles can give archaeologists an idea of what the pot as a whole probably looked like without needing all the pieces!

Sometimes, putting most of the pot back together again is possible. But sometimes they can't because they don't have enough pieces or a place to store it or they think it would stay in better condition as separate pieces. So, they create drawings of what the pot should look like!

Although I am not a diagnostic piece, the archaeologists found lots of pieces around me, and were able to make a drawing of what I looked like! Here I am!

A Manual of Egyptian Pottery, Wodzińska

Once archaeologists were able to draw me, they could fit me into the history of pots themselves. They say I'm from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, cool right? Here are some other Middle Kingdom pots that were found around me:

A Manual of Egyptian Pottery, Wodzińska

Can you see the similarities?

Some pots are similar, and some are very different. Some pots are made relatively the same over and over through time, but others undergo changes. These changes are what archaeologists use to determine how old a pot is that they find!

Pots have a style, meaning they have a specific shape, color, decoration, and design. Many pots with similar style are considered a pot type, called typology. Style can change over time, but very slowly. So, what archaeologists look to do is map out those changes and create a timeline of pottery. Then, when they find a new pot and figure out what it looks like, they can match it to other pots that were already found and put into the timeline! These timelines are called serations. Once example that shows both typologies and seriation is this:

Image

While archaeologists have other ways to date me, seriation for pottery in Egypt is very detailed because of the amount that is left and the amount of work previous archeologists have put into creating a detailed timeline.

So yay, we know what I looked like, and where I fit, but what about what I actually did when the Ancient Egyptians used me?