Ceramics and Pre-Pottery Neolithic

[Elfryc]

I was reading a bit on this site, looking if there were interesting things to learn there (and noticing that France is nearly totally absent, contrary to Spain!)
https://exarc.net/eras/neolithic?page=0

When I found this one:

What temperature is a fire (NL)? | EXARC

EDIT (1):
This would mean there were no read need to bother with mining coal, yup?
Although I just found an amateur website about coal mines saying the Gauls did used coal – just the part accessible from the surface. No real need to bother mining if there’s enough wood all around you, and you have to keep a fire alight, with embers, etc.

EDIT (2):
Reading a bit this webpage, there are a few dates. The first mentions in an Anglo-Saxon doc in the 9th century, a few legends saying black coal was known since “a long time”, the first historical mentions in France in the 11/12th century, first industry related to mines a bit after that, etc. Nothing real precise, but I don’t think we should care for the Neolithic times.

[lotus253]

Coal can get much hotter than wood, so there’s definitely a benefit if you’re trying to melt metal. Secondly, those people you’re mentioning are. 1000 BCE - 1000CE (more or less). There is more time separating them from the Neolithic, then separating them from us. As the game progresses into the bronze and Iron Age, coal will certainly play a very important role.

To be clear, my thermometer only goes to 550C, but I suspect I’m going much hotter than that using distance inverse Square and measuring multiple points approaching the flame. One can mathematically make some deductions. My guess is that the hottest I can possibly hit with reasonable certainty and consistency would be 800-830C.

[Elfryc]

@lotus253

Coal can get much hotter than wood, so there’s definitely a benefit if you’re trying to melt metal. Secondly, those people you’re mentioning are. 1000 BCE - 1000CE (more or less). There is more time separating them from the Neolithic, then separating them from us. As the game progresses into the bronze and Iron Age, coal will certainly play a very important role

Yup. So, no need to bother for the Neolithic time, as you said yourself you consider Neolithic didn’t encompass copperwork.

And even if in some rare regions there were accessible coal not needing too much work (mines, etc.), probably charcoal will be far easier to represent if this is felt as necessary.

[Uncasual]

@Elfryc

This would mean there were no read need to bother with mining coal, yup?

Although I just found an amateur website about coal mines saying the Gauls did used coal – just the part accessible from the surface. No real need to bother mining if there’s enough wood all around you, and you have to keep a fire alight, with embers, etc.

I was not thinking about mining it really, but about making it:

Primitive Technology: Charcoal

[lotus253]

Oh, I thought you were talking about coal, as in bituminous coal. Charcoal would definitely be used, and in fact I use some of this very night. Charcoal is how I get my highest temperatures and it’s what’s currently burning in my fire as I type this.

I just leaned over and took a photo of the fire that’s keeping me warm on this cold night, basically fueled at this point by charcoal.

Here’s some of the charcoal that I had from last fire to burn in this one.

[Uncasual]

@lotus253

Oh, I thought you were talking about coal, as in bituminous coal. Charcoal would definitely be used,

My fault, didn’t know the difference in English. In Spanish both are called the same in popular language.

[lotus253]

lol. Coal and charcoal are very different words in English. But since I can’t speak a foreign language, I certainly can’t condemn you LOL.

[Uncasual]

@lotus253

lol. Coal and charcoal are very different words in English. But since I can’t speak a foreign language, I certainly can’t condemn you LOL.

I just read the difference. I thought coal and charcoal were synonymous.
Of course in Spanish there are technical different names for both, but in popular language both are just “carbón”. Charcoal is also named “carbón vegetal”, something like “vegetal coal” sometimes.
Anyway, another English lesson learned today, along with “grind”

[lotus253]

Grind? As in breaking up into something smaller or working very hard?

English is very difficult as it is a confusing language made up of many other languages. There could be PIE roots, Latin, Spanish, French, and a dozen more LOL

[Elfryc]

I also hate coal/charcoal/black coal in English

I just found a conference in French about Roman (char)coal. It seems, as said by @lotus253 that iron at least pretty needs higher temperatures than anything else, and that basically the first in Gaul to use such process extensively were the Romans – so much so because it was basically everything you could make with charcoal.

Inside there is content that should interest you (translating quite freely, as I’m quite tired now):

"Wood was mainly used for cooking and heating in open hearths, but also for a variety of craftsmen through ovens allowing a higher temperature. Baking pottery, burning chalk or pitch and making some metals (like copper) was done with wood.
Charcoal has a higher heating power than wood, but its actions is limited in space and its embers can’t heat a great oven. What’s more, pottery baking needs a process beginning with a low heat and finishing with a high heat through small woods, which cannot be made with charchoal.

Source: https://www.college-de-france.fr/media/jean-pierre-brun/UPL2796733085267500667_R1112_Brun.pdf

The guy is Professor at the College de France, the head of the department “Techniques & Economy in Mediterranean Antiquity”. Meaning we’ll (hopefully) have to learn his name and work by heart
(and I suspect @Gal2 is already learning his work…)

[lotus253]

@Elfryc

pottery baking needs a process beginning with a low heat and finishing with a high heat through small woods, which cannot be made with charchoal

This is something I’ve discovered and confirmed tonight. According to the expert in pottery I’ve been speaking with, it is possible to stack your clay pots along with wood, and then light the entire thing on fire. But it seems, that this requires extremely dry clay. Western Europe simply just isn’t warm enough, unless you’re in someplace like apparently Spain or Italy. The death of my clay pots is sudden heating, which is exactly what happens when the flame touches it

[lotus253]

The fire is burning down to Embers now, and the pottery appears to have mostly survive. I see a single crack in one of the pots, the other one looks to be in good order. I think that both whorl’s have survived the conflagration. The crack may simply have been the result of my inexperience at Pottery as I didn’t see very many other problems with the fire.

Both parts, cherry red

A whorl, seemingly surviving the burn

[lotus253]

The pots came out of the fire and were carefully moved away with a stick.
I’d have liked to let the fire naturally end, but I needed sleep before work tomorrow.

Dusting off the pots, they looked pretty good! \o/

The first pot had a nasty crack, but it did’t separate. It could be used for holding something dry in the hut, like grain. This pot was made more quickly than the second pot, so I suspect this was simply poor construction on my part.

The second pot came out great!!! It has no significant cracks and is water tight. The design looks fine (early Linear Potter Culture). The large dark part came from an overly heated area. I think the burn marks look really nice and do what I can to make them. This pot is good for water, food and even brewing alcohol!

The spindle whorls (weights for a drop spindle) came out great! They will both be turned into spindles for wool (they are too heavy for flax or hemp). Their little designs are easier to see in person. The camera doesn’t show them well.

Next time, I hope to make 5-10 pots in one shot, as well as a flax whorl and some beads and figurines!

Lessons Learned

1. Add crushed pottery and/or organic material to clay!!!
2. Fire VERY slowly!!!
3. Move fire towards pots
4. Dry in over many hours, first

And… that’s probably how they did it in the neolithic.

[lotus253]

Skilled female potters travelled around the Baltic nearly 5000 years ago

I use this very sample corded ware culture technique of adding broken ceramics from my previous pots into subsequent pots to help gasses escape and aid in drying \o/

Broken/failed spindle whorl gets wrapped in worn leather and broken with a rock. It is next placed under 2 large rocks and crushed (moving larger rocks back and forth like a sandwich).

Resulting dust and rock bits are added to wet clay and mixed well.

Result is clay which is MUCH stronger and can resist thermal shock better.

[lotus253]

Pottery Firing Attempt 3

I set out all of the various pots and beads in preparation for firing. They had undergone many high temperature drying sessions and my oven to simulate being dried around the family hearth.

I started the fire small, and it quickly burned up fast.

Only once the fire was sufficiently hot did I begin stacking pottery.

All of the pottery had to be placed close enough to the fire that its temperature would slowly heat until it was ready to be introduced directly to the flame.

I used my portable hand loom to pass the time weaving linen and wool.

When the fire was hot enough in the pottery had surpassed 800° F, I carefully pushed it into the actual flame.

When the fire had ended many of the objects had successfully fired without breaking. I was quite pleased! the entire operation took about six hours and around 3/64 a cord of wood.

A Cucuteni-Trypillia (Romanian) culture figure from ~4000 BCE!

Cucuteni-Trypillia (Romanian) culture figure from ~5000 BCE!

White 06 cone clay. Fired well and came out intact!

Red 06 cone, Earthen clay. Fired well but a large crack formed due to thermal expansion.

White 06 cone clay. Fired well but a large crack formed due to thermal expansion.

White 06 cone clay. Fired well but a large crack formed due to thermal expansion.

White 06 cone clay. Fired well but a large crack formed due to thermal expansion.

White 06 cone clay. Fired well and came out intact!!!

Small pigment container with cap. White cone 06 clay. Fired well, came out intact!

White cone 06 clay. These little balls are meant to be heeded by the fire and then dropped into clay pots full of water to cause them to heat. This is less risky than heeding the pot by the fire directly. Such balls were found at Catalhoyuk.

White cone 06 clay. Three spindle whirls used in spinning string!

This is the beaded capelet I intend to make using clay beads. I was very pleased to find that all 560 beads survived the firing!

You can see that they are a bit dusty, but I will polish each one before applying it to the handspun threads of the capelet.

I had to pick each and every one of them out of the fire which took quite some time.

The box full of beads weighs about 4 pounds.

[Grigor]

This might interest you, @lotus253! Indeed, the general methods and technology in this video have been practically the same for many thousands of years, since pottery neolithic and beyond…

[Grigor]

How has your experimentation fared since last time, @lotus253?

Where do you get your mud from, do you buy it ready made, or do you go through the somewhat laborious process of finding a good supply, and turning it into plastic, homogeneous clay for ceramics?

I imagine that the neolithic humans, once mostly sedentary, must have very quickly become very good at pottery, seeing as they would most probably know their surrounding area quite well, including all kinds of soil and rock and wood available. I imagine the most experienced potters sent out members of the family to get more “red clay” or “grey clay” or other kinds. The many ingenious inventions seen in the videos of Primitive Technology are of course a great inspiration to how neolithic man might have acted, and experimented, and achieved, over generations of hard work.

Maybe @Uncasual can say something about how the ground itself will differ in its ability to offer the player resources. Will there be different kinds of mud and soil and rock, in different parts of the map, so that depending on where the tribe members dig, they might find different results? Or will there rather be “resource nodes”, scattered in certain areas, like “clay nodes” next to rivers or lakes?

[lotus253]

@Grigor

Where do you get your mud from, do you buy it ready made, or do you go through the somewhat laborious process of finding a good supply, and turning it into plastic, homogeneous clay for ceramics?

I have not made too much Pottery recently as my prehistoric efforts have been devoted to making clothing. However, I am in the process of making a new, better warp weighted Loom. This requires Loom weights which are often ceramic. These weights, as well as some other pottery and figures are drawing. I’m planning on firing them in a week or two, though it’s been non-stop rain so I haven’t been able to

I tend to purchase natural clay in large blocks because it’s hard to get natural resources where I live. I have contacted my local forestry service to see if I can use public land to gather some of the resources I need for my various prehistoric crafts, but until they reply with a yes, I hunt for my materials in the dense forest of the Internet lol

Pinterest

Also, for pottery should be of higher quality in places where there are cattle grazing. their manure mixes with the clay producing a much stronger and durable clay. Organic matter in the manure is destroyed in the fire but produces air holes to let moisture out, producing a sturdier and less micro fractured pot

[Nebu13]

The best youtube channel about crafting ever!

[lotus253]

If you’re talking about the Primitive Channel, I actually avoid it myself. It’s a wonderful Channel and the guy is really awesome, but he isn’t going for historical accuracy (which is fine because that isn’t the purpose of the channel). =/

To avoid the risk of accidentally polluting my research with ideas that might be for me more modern time, I avoid the channel and instead stick only to archaeological research.