Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T18:27:14.174Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Role for Ceramic Materials Science in Art, History and Archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2011

W. David Kingery
W. David Kingery*
Affiliation:
Regents Fellow, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560 (Current address: Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering and Dept. of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721)
Get access

Extract

One's first contact with materials occurs as infants with the swaddling cloths that warm and comfort us, but also restrain us. As life goes on material objects always surround us. They structure the way we look at the world and how we arrange our thoughts; they serve a wide range of utilitarian, aesthetic, social and symbolic functions; methods of designing, manufacturing and using materials are at the core of our technology and much of our culture. Materials technology, making and using objects, is thus in a unique position relative to history and culture. While interpretations sought by study of these objects are judgmental and humanistic, they must rest on as secure a foundation of solid materials knowledge as is possible. The central paradigm of materials technology is that the selection and processing of materials gives rise to a particular structure which is the source of useful properties (Fig. 1). This is exactly the process used by the artist who aims at aesthetic properties, and the craftsman and technologist who aim at particular properties.

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 123: Symposium L – Materials Issues in Art and Archaeology I , 1988 , 159
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Kingery, W. D., Plausible Inferences from Ceramic Artifacts, J. Field Arch., 8, 457 (1981).Google Scholar
2. Kingery, W. D., Microstructure Analysis As Part of a Holistic Interpretation of Ceramic Art and Archaeological Artifacts, Archaeomaterials 1 (2), 91–99 (1987).Google Scholar
3. Braudel, Fernand, The Structure of Everyday Life, Harper and Rowe, New York, p. 334 (1981).Google Scholar
4. Gourdin, W. H. and Kingery, W. D., The Beginning of Pyrotechnology: Neolithic and Egyptian Lime Plaster, J. Field Arch. 2, 133–150 (1975).Google Scholar
5. Kingery, W. D., Vandiver, P. B. and Prickett, M., J. Field Arch., in press (1988).Google Scholar
6. David Jeremy, J., Transatlantic Industrial Revolution, Press, M.I.T., Cambridge, MA (1981).Google Scholar
7. Smith, M. Roe, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press (1977).Google Scholar
8. Louise Cort, A., Korean Influences in Japanese Ceramics: The Impact of the Teabowl Wars of 1592–1598, pp. 331–362 in Kingery, W. D. (ed.), Ceramics and Civilization II: Technology and Style, American Ceramic Society, Columbus, OH (1986).Google Scholar
9. Kingery, W. D., The Development of European Porcelain, pp. 153–180 in Kingery, W. D. (ed.), Ceramics and Civilization III: High-Technology Ceramics - Past, Present and Future, American Ceramic Society, Westerville, OH (1987).Google Scholar
10. Polanyi, M., Personal Knowledge, University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1958); M. olanyi, The Creative Imagination, Chem. and Eng. News 44 85–93 (1966).Google Scholar
11. Garfinkel, Y., Neolithic, A Village from the Seventh Millennium B.C. in Lower Galilee, Israel, J. Field Arch. 14, 199–212 (1987).Google Scholar
12. Garfinkel, Y., Burnt Lime Products and the Social Implications in the Pre-Pottery B Villages of the Near East Paleorient 31(1), 69–75 (1987).Google Scholar
13. Bar-Yosef, O., A Cave in the Desert. Nahal Hemar, Cat. No. 285, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (1985).Google Scholar
14. Kingery, W. D., Nahal Hemar Plaster Beads, work in progress (1986).Google Scholar
15. Blackman, M. J., The Manufacture and Use of Burned Lime Plaster at Proto- Elamite Anshan (Iran), pp. 107–115 in Wertheim, T. A. and Wertime, S. F. (eds), Early Pyrotechnology, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC (1982).Google Scholar