So Where Lies the Future of Pottery Studies?

The combination of abundance, near indestructability and the almost unique plasticity of the medium conspire to make the ceramic assemblage one of the most important resources from an archaeological site. Although the questions that we are posing in archaeology have altered as ideas in the subject shift and develop, it is often to pottery that we turn to test new hypotheses. Unlike some other classes of archaeological material – glass or metalwork for instance – pottery is not continuously recycled, so large parts of the assemblage do not disappear from the archaeological record. We also have the possibility of studying the development of technological and stylistic traditions over long periods of time, and thus the effects of social, political and economic change on a small group of individuals, namely the potters themselves.

The range of tools at our disposal with which to examine our material has continued to grow dramatically, at all levels from the individual sherd to the distribution of pottery across a site or across a region. While this is very exciting, it can also be very frustrating because all but the best-funded projects will not be able to afford to use many of the available techniques, and some projects will not be able to afford any of them. This places a heavy burden on archaeologists, in terms of the wise use of the resources available to them. Which techniques are the most useful to answer the questions that they are asking, and which might be mere ‘window dressing’, however attractive they may be? Such decisions must be supported by the ability to argue for them in the broader archaeological forum.