This volume draws together topics and methodologies essential for the socio-cultural, mineralogical, and geochemical analysis of archaeological ceramic, one of the most complex and ubiquitous archaeomaterials in the archaeological record. It provides an invaluable resource for archaeologists, anthropologists, and archaeological materials scientists.

This second edition of the classic textbook, The Archaeologist’s Laboratory, is a substantially revised work that offers updated information on the archaeological work that follows fieldwork, such as the processing and analysis of artifacts and other evidence. An overarching theme of this edition is the quality and validity of archaeological arguments and the data we use to support them. The book introduces many of the laboratory activities that archaeologists carry out and the ways we can present research results, including graphs and artifact illustrations. Part I introduces general topics concerning measurement error, data quality, research design, typology, probability and databases. It also includes data presentation, basic artifact conservation, and laboratory safety. Part II offers brief surveys of the analysis of lithics and ground stone, pottery, metal artifacts, bone and shell artifacts, animal and plant remains, and sediments, as well as dating by stratigraphy, seriation and chronometric methods. It concludes with a chapter on archaeological illustration and publication. A new feature of the book is illustration of concepts through case studies from around the world and from the Palaeolithic to historical archaeology.The text is appropriate for senior undergraduate students and will also serve as a useful reference for graduate students and professional archaeologists.

This book focuses on the utilitarian ceramic traditions during the socio-political transition from the late Byzantine into the early Islamic Umayyad and 'Abbasid periods, in southern Transjordan and the Negev. Production clusters, manufacturing techniques, distribution patterns, and material links between communities are analysed.

D.R. Brothwell and A.M. Pollard have got together to create the first large scale review of the many sciences which contribute to modern archaeology for over 30 years. The Handbook of Archaeological Sciences is intended to bring together a substantial overview of the sciences in archaeology in one complete volume. The book is organised under eight broad headings: dating, quaternary palaeoenvironments, human palaeobiology, developments in biomolecular archaeology, resource exploitation, archaeological prospection, conservation science in the archaeological context and statistical and computer applications. The contributors, who are all well-known in their own areas of expertise, bring together in each chapter the basic science and the relevance of this science to the overall goal of archaeology - understanding humans in the past. This book is an invaluable source of reference for those interested in archaeology, anthropology, quaternary studies, geography, palaeoecology, computing, biology, chemistry and physics, those involved in commercial and local authority field archaeology units, museums and archaeological organisations.

The focus of attention in ceramic research is increasingly turning away from duplicative amassing and reporting of material and towards synthetic work. This handbook sets out information which might be sought by ceramic analysis, and gives broad outlines of the different methods of analysis.

This book combines findings from archaeology and anthropology on the making, use and distribution of hand-made pottery, the rhythms of mobility involved and the transformations triggered by such processes, discussing different theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches.

Settlement evidence has long been an under-studied category of finds in examining the cultural changes which occurred in northern central Europe in the final centuries BC. These changes have been widely associated with the process of latènisation which affected most of the communities in the North European Plain in the Iron Age. This book addresses the central question of the mechanism and agency behind these changes, by examining material culture patterns. The study uses data from 89 systematically selected settlement sites located in the Oder River area, including places of production. The data is contextualised against the evidence from other central and northern European sites of similar chronology and against other categories of finds from the study area. The book also contains systematic catalogues of the examined sites, of their buildings, and of settlement features of other kinds.

The 37th annual Clay Minerals Society Meeting in Chicago in 2000 brought together a range of different approaches to the analysis and interpretation of clays and ceramics from archaeological contexts. Addressing topics such as mineral identification and characterisation, material sourcing and regional surveys of the availability of clay sources, a wide range of case studies are presented from prehistoric Greece and Anatolia, Italian ceramics and clays from the Neolithic and Etruscan periods, Gaulo-Roman France and South America pottery production and clays.