Ceramics - Roger Thayer Stone Center For Latin American ...

Ceramics

Target grade level: 2nd +

Background and Vocabulary: Agriculture first developed in the Middle East
approximately 10,000 years ago. With the advent of agriculture, humans moved
into what is know as the Neolithic Period. Since agriculture was invented at
different times all over the world, the Neolithic began at different times in different
places.

Agriculture led groups of people to adopt a sedentary lifestyle. Some people
were able to maintain this type of lifestyle before developing agriculture, but this
is relatively rare. What typically happened was that people began to cultivate
different types of plants as they moved around the countryside during their
seasonal migrations. Seasonal movements allowed prehistoric people to be in
the optimum places at the right times to exploit resources. Their activities,
especially those involving plants, allowed them to begin very simple genetic
manipulations of plants without any intention at all (this is horticulture).
Eventually ancient peoples spread the plants they used seasonally to different
locations. At some point, they made the decision to remain in one place for most
or all of the year. This is called Sedentism. Sedentary societies employ
agriculture to produce enough food to feed everyone. They usually develop quite
advanced agriculture systems involving the manipulation of plants and intensive
farming methods that allow them to produce lots of food. Examples of intensive
farming methods are irrigation, multi-cropping, and field rotation.

Once people began living in the same places for most of the year they no longer
had to worry about transporting all of their belongings. Ceramics developed
hand in hand with a sedentary lifestyle because people needed to store
surpluses of food, and they didn’t have to worry about this type of container
breaking as they moved around. The earliest ceramics are fairly simple, but
different cultures all over the world have developed very elaborate and beautiful
types of ceramic vessels.

Neolithic – the time in history after people began planting their own food and had
a mostly sedentary life style. Ceramics are usually a marker of the Neolithic.
Agriculture – using plants intensely. Harvesting crops and selectively replanting
seeds to encourage favored traits.
Horticulture –planting and using plants without any intentional manipulation of
their genetic make up.
Subsistence Agriculture – Producing only enough food for your own needs. Not
commercial production of food.
Farming – Intensive agriculture and use of animals.
Sedentism – Living in one place all or most of the time.

Ceramics – containers that are made out of clay and fired to achieve hardness.
Typology – a classification system. Ceramic typologies allow archaeologists to
put different types, or classes, into groups. These groups can be dated, once
archaeologist learn enough about the excavation levels in which they are
typically found. Typologies also allow archaeologists to discuss the kinds of
ceramics made in certain regions.
Classification system
Regional Similarities – ceramics made in one place, be it a village, group of
villages, or a whole region, will often have similarities in the types of clays used,
and therefore the color, or in the way they are finished. There are regional
preferences that are culturally defined and these preferences are often
expressed in ceramics.
Symbolic Meaning - Meaning conveyed by symbols. This is best explained with
examples. When you see an apple in the classroom you think of teachers, when
you see a cross you think of Christianity, when you see an engagement ring it
means the person wearing it is not married yet, but is getting married.

Objectives: to teach students about how agriculture developed and why
ceramics were important in the lives of ancient people. The ceramics project will
allow students to discover how difficult it is to make nice pots and the processes
involved in this. The typologies project teaches children about classification
systems and lets them get hands-on experience with developing their own
typologies.

Teacher Preparation: There are two activities that you can do with this ceramics
class plan. For students of all ages, you can do the ceramic activity and let
students make their own pots. You can also teach older students about ceramic
typologies.

Ceramics: clay, Popsicle sticks, twine, burlap, leaves, clam shells

Typologies: Bring different types of dishes or ceramic to class. An everyday dish,
good china (maybe a teacup that’s already chipped), baking dish, little flower pot,
obviously old dishes from the Salvation Army, ect.

Procedure:
1. Sedentism and agriculture led to a need for pots to store and cook food in.
Explain how ancient pottery, the most common artifacts that
archaeologists find, is analogous to today’s Tupperware in many ways.
Storing food for times when food isn’t so abundant has always been
important.
a. Use artist’s clay, available at art supply stores, to make little pots.
Pinch pots use a big blob of clay that you pinch up and form into a
pot. It works well to use the cupped palm of your hand to form this.
A coil pot is formed by making long snakes of clay and then winding
them around and up. Smooth the edges and seams together.

b. Smooth and decorate the outsides of the pots with the edges of the
clam shell or the Popsicle stick by scraping it lightly along the
surface. Press pieces of twine, burlap, shell and leaves into the
wet clay to make pretty designs.

c. If your school doesn’t have a kiln, you can take ceramics to local
ceramic studios and pay a small price to have the pieces fired.

2. To make this activity more advanced for older students you can explain
how archaeologists create ceramic types. Archaeologists have
classification systems that allow them to identify kinds of pottery and
chronologies.
a. Bring in lots of different kinds of dishes or pieces of broken dishes
that you have at home. Have kids group these according to
different requirements – fancy vs. everyday, plain vs. decorated,
thin vs. thick, coarse (flowerpot) vs. fine (bone china). Point out
that some things will group together, for example the thin ceramics
are also probably the ones they put into the fancy group. Then ask
them to put the ceramics into order by age.
b. After you have fired your students’ pots, lay them out on a table and
arrange them into categories that the class comes up with. Round
vs. oval, tall vs. short, shell design vs. burlap design, nice vs.
messy. Then see what you can say about what the groups mean.
For example students A and B sat next to each other, so they
shared the same tools and their pots both have shell and leaf
designs. Or students C, D, E, and F are all on the soccer team, so
they made pots that look like soccer balls. In the case of A and B
you can say something about regional similarities. Ceramics from
certain areas often exhibit similarities - they look the same. In the
case of C, D, E and F, the design on the pottery has symbolic
meaning, the design means that people who made these pots were
part of an elite group, or that they value the thing that they are
representing. When archaeologists find pots like these, that are
obviously symbolic and represent objects, they don’t always know
what is being depicted, but they do know that it had meaning to the
people who made it.

Discussion topics:
Talk about the different types of ceramics your students made. What forms
(shapes) did they create? What shapes were easy to make and what shapes
were harder. What are the functions of their vessels going to be (ashtray, soap
dish, flower pot)? Ask your students what shapes they think would be best for
storing seeds, corn cobs and beans.