About Pottery

The invention of pottery is a highly significant cultural phenomenon in human history. Although the role of early ceramics in different areas of the world is still a matter of debate, the emergence of pottery in a culture has often been linked with important changes in lifestyle, such as sedentary living and the emergence of food production. Although pottery may have had different functions in different communities, and at distinct times in the same communities, it obviously had, and still has, a major impact on people’s lives. Ceramics have not only assumed a utilitarian role, for instance in the preparation and storage of food and beverages, but clay pots and figurines have also served ritual and medical purposes (Barnett & Hoopes 1995). In sub-Saharan Africa pottery is invested with great symbolic importance. The craft is surrounded with rituals and prohibitions and several steps in the production sequence serve as a metaphor for interpreting and acting upon certain facets of human experience. People make metaphoric use of pottery vocabulary to refer to transformations from wet to dry, soft to hard, raw to cooked, natural to cultural, impure to pure through the operation of heat, to mark isolation and destruction, to designate bodily cavities, or to discuss concepts like spirit, conception, and essence (Barley 1994; Gosselain 1999; Jacobson-Widding 1992). Moreover, ‘potting traditions are “sociotechnical aggregates”, an intricate mix of inventions, borrowed elements, and manipulations that display an amazing propensity to redefinition by individuals and local groups’ (Gosselain 2000). A potter’s technical behavior thus leaves room for choices both along functional and social or symbolic lines, creating multifaceted associations between technological styles and social identity.

From:  www.metafro.be