[MUSIC].

Welcome to some serious archaeology.

What you're looking at here is what
archaeologists over the years, over the
globe, over time, have confronted a table
full of pottery.
You've been hearing a lot about pottery
from different people and different
forms.
What my lovely assistant Andy and I are
going to do today is basically sort this
table full of pottery and explain to you,
so, how archaeologists approach what looks
like a mess of clay and begin to make
sense of it.
So this is all of a single period, the
Roman period.
So it's, we don't have the complication
of a maybe this is early Bronze Age and
maybe this is Modern and all that.
So this is a single period assemblage and
I think we're going to start by sorting
according to form and, has been mentioned elsewhere in the
course, different parts of a pot will
give you sort of tighter information
about function or about chronology.
And the use- there's kind of a hierarchy.
Rims are most helpful you love it when
you find a rim.
Bases, next down, not bad, not quite as
sensitive to change through time.
Handles, handles tends to be a handle and
then body sherds.
And body sherds are often least helpful
unless they have some sort of decoration
on them.
So what we're going to do is we're
going to put our rims over here, our
bases here, our handles here and our
body sherds there.
>> Makes sense.
>> Good luck.
>> Let's do it.
>> Alright, let's do it.
Sometimes you can't tell.
[LAUGH] It's like.
>> Rim, isn't it?
>> Rim, rim.
Yeah.
Sometimes you think well yeah, it could
be a handle.
Or is it moving to be a base but I think
we are right in its rim.
Handle is, we'll, we'll show some
specific handles and.
sometimes they have stubs on them where
they would have attached to the pot,
sometimes they don't.
This I should explain is a sort of a
pre-sorted assemblage from a prior dig
done by Brown University.
So I think, you know, if we'd been
digging and just, you know, in this Roman
site and pulling stuff out we, this is an
unlikely assemblage to get.
There's a lot of feature shards, there's
a lot of diagnostics here, you can see we
don't have very many body shards so
someone's clearly kind of come along, and
sorted this already.
and I'm sorry to say probably a lot from
this, the original totality of the
assemblage.
It's probably been discarded.
In a lot of archaeological projects,
there's not enough room for storage.
You can imagine this times, you know,
10,000.
You know just lots and lots and lots of
pottery.
And in in the, the good old, bad old
days, it used to be thought, why keep it.
Nowadays, we, we, we keep more, we store
more, because we can learn, always can
learn more even from the plainest of body
shards.
You can do this for hours.
You think this is boring?
Try doing it all day, every day for six
weeks or more.
>> [LAUGH] I shouldn't say it's boring.
If you're [CROSSTALK]
>> If you love pottery, some people
just, this is their world, this is their life, they love it.
Again you can see that it's, you know,
sometimes and these are actually, you
know, pretty good pieces and sometimes
you'll pick up something.
And you can tell as such as the body
sure.
But it depends on where the break was.
So you know, there's indeterminate is a
category to keep in mind.
[SOUND] Okay.
So these are our rims and they come as
you see in all shapes and sizes.
This pithos?
>> Pithos or dolium.
>> Pithos or dolium, big two terms for
very large vessels like god how, check
out, this is just the rim.
Like that and it very coarsewear, very
strong, very you know.
Rock like, very sturdy.
And these things last.
In archeological survey, when you're
walking across the landscape, when you're
just looking at the ground, finding
pottery on the surface.
it's the tougher stuff that tends to
survive so big stuff, small stuff, here.
Tell them about that.
>> So this is a piece of African red
slip or sigilada.
You can see actually it's quite hard to
see but it's got a very nice red slip
over the outside of the pottery.
>> That's a better piece.
>> Is that a better piece?
>> Better piece.
>> and that would be used for fine sort
of table wares instead of being used for
coarsewares or for cooking.
So more of a serving dish than a cooking
dish.
You can see the fine red sort of glaze
that's over top of this pottery as
opposed to, as opposed to the courser
cooking wares.
>> Correct.
>> Very, very typically Roman pottery.
>> Made in made in North Africa but
found all over the empire and indeed even
beyond the borders of the, of the empire.
ARS has been found for example in India
and places like that.
So it travels.
This material travels.
Alright, bases.
This base, yeah, I guess it's a, a base
but as you see, it's got a, a hole in it,
it's been perforated, which can mean
various, various things.
In some context it might point to ritual
use you know, p, there are sort of gray
vessels in, in ancient cultures where.
You know, you're pouring libations,
you're pouring offerings to the dead and
they go [NOISE] right through and there's
a hole in the bottom, you pour it into
the vessel and it descends into the earth
towards the dead.
in this case though it's not exactly the.
>> Shape for it.
>> The shape for it or it's not the
loveliest material not that grape goods
always have to be fancy.
So why else might it be pierced?
It doesn't look accidental.
It's a mystery, as which everyone likes
to think archeology is all about mystery.
Sometimes, its true.
So different shapes are from fine-wares,
okay?
>> here's an example of a, a fine-ware
again, a red slip.
But we can see that it's a very open
vessel so it would be more of a plate or
a serving dish as opposed to a closed, a
closed pot.
>> Mm-hm.
I don't know if we, yeah, have any closed
clearly closed, closed shapes here.
>> we do actually.
Where did it go?
>> This one.
>> So this in contrast to a more open
vessel we can see the rim of it is
actually curving around like this.
So we can see it that it's coming up
around like this, the rim.
So, as, as the pot as a whole would sort
of very, very shut in its shape instead
of an open mouth.
>> As, as we're showing you these
pieces of pottery, you'll see markings on
them.
in fact, a lot of the artifacts we'll be
showing you will have writing on them.
yeah.
I mean, look at this stuff.
Could you like look at it and say "oh"
and then come back two years later and
say "I remember exactly that, that
handle".
Some people can pretty much do that but
for the most part we have to use labels.
So this label will tell you you know
where it comes from and a number that
will specifically identify it.
So someone ten years hence could come
back and say I want to look at that
handle.
I want to look at this number.
And there are various ways to, to mark
artifacts.
Often it is just ink, India ink with a
nibbed pen written on the material
itself.
When I ask people to do this kind of
thing I ask them to put it in a slightly
less obvious place.
This is right smack in the middle of what
you kind of might be wanting to look at.
Often you put them on the side instead,
just so it's there but more discrete.
my dream in life is to figure out a way
to bar code pottery or some sort of you
know, microdot or something like that, so
that you can keep track of it.
But you don't really you know, this is in
some ways affected defacing the artifact
but it's necessary if we're going to have
to study it.
Anything else but handles?
 >> Not really.
[LAUGH].
>> Handles.
>> Handles are handles.
And [INAUDIBLE] shards.
Body shard.
What do we got?
>> We got some more red slip.
>> Actually in this one we can see that
it's got a nice sort of design on it, so
Stamp?
>> A stamp, yes.
>> Oh yeah, oh, okay.
>> Looks like a hedgehog or something.
>> Hedgehog?
>> You don't see it?
[LAUGH]
>> I do no I don't see a hedgehog.
I was going to say
>> Junk.
>> It's a flower.
>> [LAUGH] No, it's actually.
We'll get back to you on this.
>> Yeah.
[LAUGH]
>> Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing.
but again, you know, if we had the whole
thing we could tell.
But we don't, we get this, so.
But yeah a lot of this the fine Roman
bracelet-ware is stamped or rouletted.
There's various kind of decoration.
Less exciting combed wear.
Yeah, that when pots are made on the
wheel and turned, that sometimes the, the
potter will basically drag a comb over
the surface resulting in this kind of
corrugated or cardboard looking
substance.
And that too can be, well, somewhat
diagnostic.
a lot of periods, a lot of cultures do
this kind of decoration.
But it's it's better than an absolutely
plain body shirt.
So we took this table of pottery and we
sorted it out.
We classified it by form.
Rims, base, handles, body shirts.
>> We're just very quickly can do a
different kind of sort, a different kind
of classification.
We're going to divided up by fabric to
this time.
The nature of the material, the quality
and type of material.
We're going to have very course, course
and fine.
Very simple classification.
Are you ready?
>> I'm ready.
>> Lets do it.
>> Done.
>> My fabric.