The Effects of Surface Treatment on Ceramic Performance Characteristics

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Dr. Schiffer and his colleagues will conduct research in experimental archaeology to determine the effects of various surface treatments on a number of important performance characteristics of low-fired, traditional ceramics. The relationship between such treatments as burnishing, smudging, corrugation, cord-marking, and stuccoing and the dependent variables including thermal shock resistance, heating effectiveness of cooking vessels, abrasion resistance, firing success, impact resistance and permeability, and evaporative cooling effectiveness will be examined. Experiments will be conducted on replicas (vessels and briquettes) using behaviorally relevant testing procedures. In a final stage of the project, predictions based on the experimental studies will be subjected to tests using ethnographic evidence. Two years of support will allow Dr. Schiffer's Laboratory of Traditional Technology to continue innovative studies of traditional ceramics. Although archaeologists have focussed on surface treatments of pottery for decades and devised elaborate typologies to categorize them, they have always assumed that variation reflects "style" and does not serve a functional purpose. Dr. Schiffer has argued that, to the contrary, seemingly insignificant differences may affect the functional characteristics of a vessel and that traditional potters realized this and designed pieces with such considerations in mind. Because standard techniques of ceramic analysis were not developed for pottery fired at low temperatures and not directed towards such functional questions, Dr. Schiffer has devised and applied a series of behaviorally relevant techniques. This research is important because it will allow archaeologists to analyze pottery in a new and potentially significant way. Potsherds preserve well in archaeological sites and in many regions constitute the major class of data recovered. Therefore, they are the focus of much archaeological attention. With the techniques developed by Dr. Schiffer, these remains should yield new classes of information.