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Local Clay Sources as Histories of Human–Landscape Interactions: a Ceramic Taskscape Perspective

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Abstract

In this paper, we argue that pot-making should be considered in its broader landscape to reveal not only its articulation with the many other quotidian tasks undertaken by a community but also how ancient people oriented themselves in that landscape. We address this point in the context of two small Neolithic communities in southern Calabria, Italy, by treating archaeological ceramics as congealed taskscapes and implementing a novel methodology to unravel the interactions among people, materials, and landscapes. We examine how clay sources are distributed in the local landscape, what the qualities of the clays within them are, and what specific materials the Neolithic potters used in making their pots. We ask not only where in the landscape potters went to get their raw materials but also where they did not go. Their selective engagement with the landscape reveals a social understanding of parts of the landscape considered “appropriate” and “relevant” to pot-making (inland areas) and parts that were not (coastal areas). We also ask what other tasks potters could have undertaken while collecting clays. The co-occurrence of resources in the landscape highlights the need to consider the interlocking of various daily tasks and reveals which tasks could have been perceived as socially related. By explicitly considering the task of pot-making in its landscape, this paper reveals the relational and mutually constitutive articulation of both in everyday life.

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Notes

  1. In this paper, we use the term “potter” very loosely to refer to people engaged with the task of pot-making, whether they were recognized as “potters” by their community or not. It is possible that raw materials were not collected by the same individuals who formed the pots, just as it is possible that the people who formed the pots may have not been the same as the ones who decorated them, or the ones who fired them. It is not possible to know, especially in our Neolithic case, whether “potter” was even a recognized and distinct identity.

  2. We have no complete vessels and very few nearly complete vessels from the Neolithic levels of Umbro and Penitenzeria. Size is estimated based on rim diameter and wall thickness. The diameters of Impressed ceramics vary from 10 to 28 cm, 14 cm being the most typical. Two thickness categories can be separated: a thinner (5–15 mm) and a thicker (16–25 mm).

  3. Stentinello rim diameters range from 6 to 19 cm, with the range of 9–12 cm being the most common. The most common thickness in both sites is between 4 and 8 mm, but there are vessels as thin as 2 mm and a whole category of thick vessels (9–14 mm).

  4. Undecorated rim diameters can be divided into two groups: a smaller (5–15 cm) and a larger (16–30 cm), with outliers as large as 40 cm. Their thickness varies from 2 to 14 and 5 to 18 mm, respectively.

  5. In Umbro and Penitenzeria, “Buff” means colors that vary from pale yellow (2.5Y 8/2) to very pale brown (10YR 7/3, 10YR 7/4, 10YR 8/3, 10YR 8/4) to pale brown (10YR 6/3) to pink (7.5YR 7/4, 7.5YR 8/4) and reddish yellow (7.5YR 6/6).

  6. It cannot be a zircon-rich quartz dilution, since when one plots hafnium (Hf) against thorium (Th), the correlation is positive, showing all the three distinct samples at the low end of the concentrations (Fig. 9). Many of the remaining analyzed elements plotted against Hf also behave the same way, implying that the source of variability is indeed an additional quartzite dilution and not zircon rich quartz, in which case scatterplots of silicon (Si), zircon (Zr), and Hf against any of the other silicate-related elements would have resulted in a negative correlation (Hancock 1982, 1984).

    Fig. 8
    figure 8

    Photomicrographs of characteristic thin sections from each subgroup of fabric 2 and of fabric 3: a fabric 2a, b fabric 2a, c fabric 2b, d fabric 2b, and e fabric 3 (photos by G.V. Braun and K. Michelaki)

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Acknowledgments

This paper and the research on which it is based would have been impossible without the support and aid of a great number of individuals and institutions. We deeply thank the Soprintendenza Archeologica della Calabria; the Bova Marina Archaeological Project and all its crew; the people of Bova Marina and Bova; McMaster University and especially the department of Anthropology, the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Research on Archaeological Ceramics, the McMaster Nuclear Reactor, and the Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research; the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; the Canada Foundation for Innovation; the Fitch Laboratory of Archaeometry of the British School of Archaeology at Athens; the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University; as well as Kate Spielmann, Sophie Kelly, Michael Smith, John Robb, and the anonymous reviewers who helped us tidy our data, thoughts, and prose. A special thank you is owed to Paula Kay Lazrus, St. John’s University, and to Helen Farr, Southampton University, for teaching K. Michelaki how to look at entire landscapes and seascapes.

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  1. School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, 900 S. Cady Mall, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA

    Kostalena Michelaki

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto Mississauga, 3359 Mississauga Rd. North, Mississauga, ON, Canada, L5L 1C6

    Gregory V. Braun

  3. Medical Physics and Applied Radiation Sciences and Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, 1280 Main St. West, Hamilton, ON, Canada, L8S 4K1

    Ronald G. V. Hancock

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Michelaki, K., Braun, G.V. & Hancock, R.G.V. Local Clay Sources as Histories of Human–Landscape Interactions: a Ceramic Taskscape Perspective. J Archaeol Method Theory 22, 783–827 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-014-9204-0

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