Ceramics and Pre-Pottery Neolithic

First, we cut wood into kindling and stack our wood to dry if it’s wet around the main fire.

We use previous charcoal from past fires.

Pieces of broken pottery can be seen in the image, but you collect most of them and ground them up and add them to the clay to aid in drying and reduce explosions in your next firing. Perhaps this is why we don’t see many shards in neolithic fire pits

I normally use my fire bow to make a fire, but my bow is currently broken and I haven’t made a new one. I made this fire using a single match and carefully nursing it into a roaring Blaze

Once the fire is crackling hot, I carefully placed the pottery around it at a low temperature, such as 40 or 50 c. After the pottery has fully warmed up, I will slowly move it closer to the fire until it reaches 100-120C, then leave it this temperature for little while, ever so slowly approaching the flame over many hours.

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@lotus253 I have to admit I never worked pottery, so maybe what I’m about to say is totally noob.

Couldn’t it be that you need to have (or have more) this other componant that we call “dégraissant” in French? I can’t managed to find the name in English, maybe something around “ungrease”?

I know they needed it for tablets and everything made with clay in Mesopotamia, and also for common pottery in my (wet) Western France region, so that seems to be pretty necessary. Yesterday I’ve seen in an INRAP video that instead of straw or something like this in Middle Neolithic they were pretty used to adding flint shards or even broken pottery in the clay before kneading it and forming the vessel.

I’ll try to find this video back, in case you’d be interested to see the result. And sorry if what I said above it just obvious :confused:

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I’m not sure I understand your translation, but I definitely agree that you have to add either organic matter and/or some kind of broken pottery shards or perhaps sand.

I ground up my previous failed pots into a powder and added them to the clay. After speaking with the expert in neolithic pottery, he advised me to do this. He explained that things like cow manure are very useful as they allow for easy removal of gases and water from the pottery during firing. Much of the modern Clay is very clean and pure, and doesn’t have this added impurity.

He said that you can fire Pottery stacked in wood as depicted in that picture, but this is typically done in very arid locations with extremely low humidity, or if you have a modern Pottery Shop where you can dry your pots at low temperature for a long time.

In prehistoric Western Europe, it doesn’t seem like this would have been a very feasible method. Having been hit in the face by exploding pottery, I can tell you what happens when fire is too quickly applied to it appears to be otherwise dry pottery. I ask the expert and he confirmed.

The pottery has now been raised to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, ~176C. Very soon, I will begin pushing pieces close enough to reach 500 to 700F

An hour after that, I will approach 1000F

Any faster, and they will break. I’m taking the opportunity to read a really good book on ancient warrior women of antiquity. I knew there was plenty of evidence for warrior women, but I had not realized the amount that has been found.

If these whorls make it, I could be spinning flax with them as early as tomorrow!!!

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So, all is on live? :smiley:

I just found the video after seeking it a bit - as that’s totally in the context. You may see Françoise Bostyn being interviewed from 3:55 (and Jean-Paul Demoule earlier).

When listening what she was saying, she explained that for Early Neolithic in Northern France the “dégraissant” was “chamotte” (meaning former ceramics being grinded) and burnt bones; then in Middle Neolithic it was flint being also grinded.

Maybe the translation issue is because we have one generic word to describe all the various components that may be added in, and that’s not the case in English?

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It does sound like they’re talking about exactly the same technique I’m using. The man who made the replicas for Stonehenge Museum and the British museum is the one who gave me the suggestion. \o/

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Just passed the 350C mark.
Pottery is still intact!

Slow is the way to go.
Also, I am slowly moving the fire itself towards the Ceramics, instead of the other way around. This means less likelihood of a pot rolling into the flame and exploding. As a reminder, the introduction of a pot directly into the flame results in an immediate rupture from thermal shock.

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Basically you are removing moisture excess before put the pots in the fire itself.
In Spain you only need to have them a few days in the sun before burning it and all should be fine :wink:

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Yes, and that’s basically what the Ceramics guy was telling me. Where you live, such a technique would probably work. But I I’m still unsure if the Ceramics would survive the fires described in those illustrations. The temperature change would be so quick and so drastic that you would have expansion at different rates throughout the pot. Have you tried an open fire with Pottery dried where you live?

In most of Northern Europe and even Central, you probably have to do it the way I’m doing it because of all the water. Everything is so damned wet =/

@Uncasual In Mesopotamia they did dry them in the sun, both tablets and bricks – save for some peculiar processes, like those glazed bricks that are most known in Elam, for the Gate of Ishtar at Babylon or in the Persian Palaces.
So, when baked tablets or bricks are found in the sites, this most often means there was had been a fire, making the clay nearly impossible to destroy in normal conditions.

Also @lotus253 If for the love of science you’re ready to put your life in the balance: I remember a Middle Age lesson when at the Uni saying that pottery vessel being unglazed can’t be correctly washed, as the material is porous. So, after a time, this gives a bad taste to food kept inside.

If you want to take the risk, I’m sure the devs would be very happy to know how long this vessel may be used before needing to make new ones :slight_smile:

But please, just don’t take too much risks :wink:

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The pottery is now glowing cherry red and fully encased within burning wood. This time, it looks like the ceramic held. There is no way to be sure until I remove it from the flame, but I think I may successfully have fired two pots and 2 whorls.

At 1500+ F or 815C+, the temperature of the pottery has now exceeded my thermometer and I can only guess that I’m approaching 1800F

I will let the Ceramics burn it this temperature as long as possible, and then let them cool. This is probably how this was done in the Neolithic. Afterward, I will post some lessons learned that might be helpful in modeling this.

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Not only is it troublesome because of the health problems, but there is also the problem of toxic substances from the clay leaching into the food. I will be using one of these pots to make Neolithic alcohol, but I won’t be drinking it. I’ll be making a separate batch with a modern vessel.

Remember that you could correct for this problem by simply reheating the pot in a fire to burn the inside clean. This would have to be done just as carefully as the original firing

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Congrats for your first successful pottery!

Although if I’m not wrong, with such temperatures you could have done a copper axe and greatly increased your prestige :blush:

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Copper axes are definitely not part of the Neolithic. I also cannot be sure that I’m successful. It looks from what I can tell in the fire like I am, but when the schools the pottery could be destroyed. I can’t tell until the fire burns down.

Even if there are a few cracks, as long as the pots have basically held together, I will know that I’m making significant progress. I will need to make another around of pottery.

Keep in mind that this burned 3 cubic feet of wood for just two little dorky pots (0.09 m^3)

I would say that while the moisture is previously removed you can reach very high temperatures with no problem. Also an open fire like the one in the image will never get as hot as a contained fire in a oven.

3 cubic feet of wood, and a book.

Also, I wondered: what would be the result with a fire made with smaller woods? Having something longer in time, even if needing more work to keep it alive?
Would this have changed the temperature, and as such the color maybe? Or maybe it would have been more work, or a longer time for nothing more?

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If I remember right you need to get to some specific temperature to have a properly done ceramic.
So lees temperature more time will not work as well. You will have poor quality ceramics that way -It will not stand water so well-

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One of the major problems is that having to add wood too often results in Greater fluctuation of temperature. Larger logs burn more consistently and have a lower thermal gradient, with respect to time.

The two most important factors are a consistent thermal gradient, and the maximum temperature you reach. Both of these are made better with larger logs.

But of course you need the small wood to get the fire started, for sure.

Smell something like pellets might work because the temperature becomes uniform again due to the aisometric of the pellets. Of course this would also be highly unrealistic LOL

dT/dt is the primary reason I chose a very large log to sit behind the pottery, so when it finally caught it would keep a reasonably stable temperature.

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All this makes me think of this:
When we started to prepare and use coal?
There are proofs of coal in Neolithic times? If so, was it common? Was it “large” or small scale?

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That is a good question for sure. I don’t think I recall having seen any evidence of this, but it was also not something I greatly investigated. Charcoal was very important and used extensively through the Bronze Age as well, so this suggest to me coal was not as important as you wouldn’t probably makes coal and charcoal. Maybe somebody has a better understanding of this?