How To Make Prehistoric Pottery | Stone Age Technology 

For me it felt like reaching far into the past, all the generations of suffering and survival and ingenuity and fear and mystery.

our ancestors were just as intelligent, sophisticated and ingenious as we are. Humanism hasnt made modern people any more advanced than our neolithic forefathers

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." To our hunter-gatherer ancestors who were just learning how to settle down into a lifestyle that necessitated AND facilitated the making of such pots, making one of these would've seemed like witchcraft. The fact that potters and other craftsmen would jealously guard their production secrets as hard as any 21st century industrialist with bleeding edge techniques only added to the atmosphere of mystique and possibly fear. Stories of humanlike gods with magic powers must've been echoes of a past when disciplined warriors with metallic weapons could achieve feats that would've seemed superhuman to their simpler and more rustic Stone Age foes - the metal itself must've dazzled them as much as it dazzled, say, the Mexica and the Inca who encountered the conquistadores. Let anything whose business end keeps affecting people who don't understand them be called witchcraft by their victims!

Does annyone know the name of the Music.

And I love it, it's so ancient, it's just perfect I love this video.

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Great to hear! Thanks for sharing.

:o

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That firing technique he used is interesting, it probably explains how Amratian and Kerma pottery, found in Egypt and Sudan, got their characteristic scorched lips.

I have the feeling they quickly removed the bunch with store-bought clay. The grog and quarts was way too rough for ending with a pot that has such a smooth surface.

@@arjantjeee I've dug up pottery shards from the late Neolithic and early Bronze ages in Britain and they are mostly as rough as you might imagine. Sometimes the inclusions look like someone's thrown a bag of muesli into the clay...

We completely agree! Thanks for sharing.

... may be they were my ancestors... not yours... how do you know, cousin?

@@mamgz5166 Everyone's ancestors did this sort of thing, no need to nitpick. Most English people today are not related to the people who would have made these exact pots or stonehenge.

I think that may certainly have been a consideration.

LittleKreeper maybe multiple reasons.

LittleKreeper maybe it was just because it looked good

ikr

It's easy after the first couple of hundred!

You can just dig up garden dirt and extract the clay quite easily

Late to the party, but here's an explanation: Quartz sand is often used in bodies as grog for texture and to increase thermal expansion. Powdered quartz is used in glazes and bodies also. Quartz of very fine particle size (-400 mesh) will typically enter the feldspathic melt or convert to christobalite during firing if fluxes are lacking, coarse powdered grades help to 'squeeze' glazes into fit. Intermediate sizes (200-300 mesh) seem to be best however, since their greater surface area exerts more compressive squeeze per unit.

Yes. The idea that grooved ware is a skeuomorph (made from one material to resemble another material) is quite a popular one. And humans do like making things look like they're made of something else. Some Early Bronze work deliberately copies stone forms, before the full potential of the new material mutated the ideas guiding the design.

It actually has to pre-heat next to the fire for several hours before committing it to the flames, then about one hour in the fire. Would've made a boring video though.

I've seen grogless "wild" clays fire up just fine. But also this is the first quartz grinding I've seen.

Is it just that the quartz adds silica? so maybe just to make sure there's enough silica in it to fire as such? very late comment here.

As I am dabbling with this I would love to know. I’m usually using clay from the shoreline and it works good with no additives.

@@mockupguy3577 Wow! Lucky you! I feel it can be quite rare to *find* clay and have it hold up fine as is without anything added!

Late to the party, but here's an explanation: Quartz sand is often used in bodies as grog for texture and to increase thermal expansion. Powdered quartz is used in glazes and bodies also. Quartz of very fine particle size (-400 mesh) will typically enter the feldspathic melt or convert to christobalite during firing if fluxes are lacking, coarse powdered grades help to 'squeeze' glazes into fit. Intermediate sizes (200-300 mesh) seem to be best however, since their greater surface area exerts more compressive squeeze per unit.

Thank you! Have you seen our flint axe video too? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ryMJ3c1gHuw.html Let us know what you think.

Yes i have. It is very nice too. A bit on the short side again but in this case it's o.k. I'm always glad to see a video (f.e. about cooking) that inables me to try it myself. Therefore the pottery video is a bit better because it is more detailed.

All you need is some clay to start practicing.

You could be right Ericat.

Yes, and being humans, they liked designs as a way to add a little interest to a functional object...this simple combination of patterns was one almost anyone could have done with a sharp stick. You had to have a lot of leisure time (and probably slaves), like Ancient Greece, to be able to explore extremely realistic depictions of anything in art. But we’re humans and we like to add a little interest, to whatever extent our skill level goes.

I'm curious about that, too. Will ask it separately in case that helps.

Longer than on the video and I would have done a little more crushing, given the time. But I can get from dry clay to a workable paste in about half an hour.

A lot longer than there was time for on the video :-)

Hello Rusty Fox, thanks for your question. This pot took several hours to fire but each one is different.

thankyou for your reply, i did wonder as video appears to show the pot fired ater the fire died down, i got excited thinking ok i can fire in my garden... just keep it going for hours. thanks again. i really enjoyed this video, i have air drying clay but it does not really stay together after drying, cheers

In actual fact the pot needs to warm over several hours slowly raising the temperature before finally committing to the flames. Not so interesting for a video though.

Thanks for the clarification. Was it fired in that small fire? Great video!

Yea, the final firing was about 20 to 40 mins although the pot was heated beside the fire for several hours before being committed to the flames.

Maybe your teacher can't use the wheel!

Amber Martin no, the carbon is absorbed into the pot and is just a result of natural firing. Some surface soot will come off though. I quite like the carbon marks, if you sant to see a contemporary ceramicist who embraces this look, look at Magdalene Odundo. If you dont want carbon marks id suggest firing in an electric kiln to bisque temperatures, see if there are any local ceramic groups that could fire it for you and offer advice.

@@liamturner5306 It's not carbon marks it's reduction of the iron in the clay. Carbon Monoxide from the fire binds to the Oxygen in Iron Oxides in the clay and turns the clay black.

Depends on the temperatures your kiln or clamp is getting.

Go for it!

Yes, water that is safe to drink is crucial. And cooking food increases nutritional value.

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This is true, but the same patterns turn up from very widely distributed sites around Britain, from Wales and Cornwall to Orkney. This suggests that they have at least some cultural significance.

Burnishing! Although there isn't much evidence for burnishing on Grooved Ware. It is quite common on earlier Neolithic ceramics and again on later Bronze Age pots.

@@PottedHistory Actually it has been used untill the roman times. Those sand pots, AKA non flat bottom pots used burnishing.

@@cazek445 Burnishing is a technique that's still used today, particularly in Africa and South America. Romano British potters used it on cooking pots like Black Burnished Wares but if by sand pots, you mean amphorae, these were generally sealed by the use of pitch, beeswax or resins.

Thank You! I think??

That's what I was just thinking. Seems they kinda half assed it just for the video. Same with the mixing of the clay. It would take a lot of pounding and working to get the clay to that consistency.

See answer below on how long it really took to fire this pot.

If it was, I didn't get much of it! I take it you don't approve of English Heritage supporting research and heritage skills?

Lots and lots of practice

Do I?