The first edition of this book was conceived in 1981, but did not come to fruition until 1991, as a joint project between Paul Tyers, Alan Vince and me, all of us having worked in the Museum of London at one time or another. The initial plan was that I would write Part I on the history and value of pottery studies, Alan Vince would write Part II (the practical manual) and Paul Tyers would write Part III (a series of more theoretical case studies and examples). In the end, there was much overlap and cross-editing, making it impossible to assign any chapter unequivocally to any one author. Our examples were mainly based on pottery of the Roman and later periods, because that was what we were most familiar with, but we believed that the same principles could be applied to any period and any part of the world. Although we wrote about theory, this was not ‘theory’ as would be understood by many archaeologists, but theory about the nature of data and reasonable ways of handling them. We thus concentrated on method and tried to avoid nailing our colours to any particular theoretical mast. Fashions change, but the fundamental need to allow data to interact sensibly with theory remains.

Over the years, the need for an updated second edition became obvious. The subject was moving fast, particularly in the area of scientific techniques that could be brought to bear on ceramic questions. Although the basic practical information has remained remarkably robust, there was a risk that pottery workers could miss out on the growing range of specialist techniques available to them. Also, new questions were being asked, particularly about the organisation of production, which needed to be addressed. I resisted the pressure to update the work until I retired in 2008, when it seemed that this might be a very interesting retirement project. While happy to work on most topics, I felt out of my depth with some of the ‘hard’ science associated especially with the study of pottery fabrics. Alan Vince would have been an ideal contributor here, but sadly he died in 2009. However, I was fortunate to be able to recruit Dr Michael Hughes, formerly of the British Museum Research Laboratory, to contribute Chapter 13 and to make valuable suggestions on the other chapters.