A Masterclass in Neolithic Pottery...

After what seems like months of snow and bright cold weather, our weather has changed at last.  It's grey.  It's dreich.  It's raining.  There's a howling gale outside.  Lovely...

I've finally finished my current batch of pottery illustration work.  Tomorrow, I'll continue with the marathon task of scanning all the drawings and pasting them into Adobe Illustrator for the final publication.  I almost completed the Bronze Age ones today, but there's still a host of Neolithic pots waiting in the wings.

Since you're probably scratching your heads and wondering what all the fuss is about with regards to Neolithic pottery, here, as promised, is a post on the delights of the Carinated Bowl.  It's a form with which I'm rather familiar now, since I've drawn loads of the things over the last couple of weeks.  The text I've generated here is based upon the section on Carinated Bowls in Alex Gibson's excellent book , Prehistoric Pottery of Britain and Ireland (Gibson, 2002). 

The Carinated Bowl is an earlier Neolithic form, in use between 4000-3600 BC.  The form is characteristed by its round base, and its concave neck with flaring rim.  The carination which gives the form its name is the point in the side where the angle of the wall changes.  Here's a selection of bowl forms, as illustrated in Gibson, 2002, 71:-

 

And to give you a better idea, here's a larger version of the Balfarg Riding School example, which I inked up using the Gibson illustration as a base:-

 

This is the standard format for the illustration of ceramics in an archaeological context - exterior detail shown to the right, with the section to the left.  It's usual to have the interior of the pot illustrated on the left hand side as well, with any decoration of the rim shown running upwards from the section at the left hand side.

More information on the Balfarg Excavations can be found on line at:-

http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/PSAS_2002/pdf/vol_123/123_043_210.pdf

Carinated Bowls often have a beautifully smoothed or burnished surface.  It has been suggested that the inspiration for the form came from leather bags and containers, which had wooden hoops at the rim and the middle.  Some waterlogged sites on the continent have revealed wooden examples, but no leather equivalents have yet been recovered, so, as is usual in matters prehistoric, the jury's still out on that one!

A Masterclass in Neolithic Pottery...

After what seems like months of snow and bright cold weather, our weather has changed at last.  It's grey.  It's dreich.  It's raining.  There's a howling gale outside.  Lovely...

I've finally finished my current batch of pottery illustration work.  Tomorrow, I'll continue with the marathon task of scanning all the drawings and pasting them into Adobe Illustrator for the final publication.  I almost completed the Bronze Age ones today, but there's still a host of Neolithic pots waiting in the wings.

Since you're probably scratching your heads and wondering what all the fuss is about with regards to Neolithic pottery, here, as promised, is a post on the delights of the Carinated Bowl.  It's a form with which I'm rather familiar now, since I've drawn loads of the things over the last couple of weeks.  The text I've generated here is based upon the section on Carinated Bowls in Alex Gibson's excellent book , Prehistoric Pottery of Britain and Ireland (Gibson, 2002). 

The Carinated Bowl is an earlier Neolithic form, in use between 4000-3600 BC.  The form is characteristed by its round base, and its concave neck with flaring rim.  The carination which gives the form its name is the point in the side where the angle of the wall changes.  Here's a selection of bowl forms, as illustrated in Gibson, 2002, 71:-

 

And to give you a better idea, here's a larger version of the Balfarg Riding School example, which I inked up using the Gibson illustration as a base:-

 

This is the standard format for the illustration of ceramics in an archaeological context - exterior detail shown to the right, with the section to the left.  It's usual to have the interior of the pot illustrated on the left hand side as well, with any decoration of the rim shown running upwards from the section at the left hand side.

More information on the Balfarg Excavations can be found on line at:-

http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/PSAS_2002/pdf/vol_123/123_043_210.pdf

Carinated Bowls often have a beautifully smoothed or burnished surface.  It has been suggested that the inspiration for the form came from leather bags and containers, which had wooden hoops at the rim and the middle.  Some waterlogged sites on the continent have revealed wooden examples, but no leather equivalents have yet been recovered, so, as is usual in matters prehistoric, the jury's still out on that one!