Ceramic petrology is most commonly used to identify pottery sources and map exchange networks. There are two ways to approach these studies. Site-specific projects address pottery assemblages from one site aiming to characterize locally produced and imported wares and, where possible, identify provenances for the latter. At Knossos, Crete, Wilson and Day took a multilayered approach to early Bronze Age pottery fabrics, defining ware categories based on surface treatment, decoration, and macroscopic fabric properties before comparing shape and microscopic distinctions within and across ware boundaries. They identified local and imported wares, but their results also revealed evidence of standardization and probably specialization at several workshops in the region, each distributing its wares beyond the immediate locale. The alternative approach is to explore the production and distribution of a particular type of pottery over a region, by sampling specific wares from several sites. Whitbread used petrography to characterize the fabrics of Greek transport amphorae, specialized containers used to ship liquids in the classical world. The results show that fabrics discriminate amphorae produced in disparate parts of the Aegean region, some centers producing a variety of fabrics reflecting production in different local workshops.
See also: Ceramics and Pottery; Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Stylistic; Vitreous Materials Analysis.
World History
