Fired Clay in Four Porcelain Clusters examines how energy use in the ceramics-making industry has evolved as a result of technological advancements and changing social norms and ideas in environmental conservation. Three main research themes are highlighted. First, the book examines how the evolving use of energy fuels has impacted the developmental history of the ceramics-making industry, especially with regard to productive output. The second theme focuses on energy use by networks of specialists and technicians in ceramics-making artistic clusters and how ceramicist communities in the world organize themselves institutionally to maximize resource-sharing. Third, at a cognitive level, the volume studies changes in production and design, environmental thinking, energy use, and aesthetic trends among ceramicists and consumers. The four cities or towns of Arita, Hong Kong, Jingdezhen, and Yingge are the settings for this research.

In World Trade Systems of the East and West, Geoffrey C. Gunn profiles Nagasaki's historic role in mediating the Japanese bullion trade, especially silver exchanged against Chinese and Vietnamese silk. Founded in 1571 as the terminal port of the Portuguese Macau ships, Nagasaki served as Japan's window to the world over long time and with the East-West trade carried on by the Dutch and, with even more vigor, by the Chinese junk trade. While the final expulsion of the Portuguese in 1646 characteristically defines the “closed” period of early modern Japanese history, the real trade seclusion policy, this work argues, only came into place one century later when the Shogunate firmly grasped the true impact of the bullion trade upon the national economy.

Extensive excavations by MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) near Houghton Regis and Toddington, in south Central Bedfordshire, provide a detailed multi-period dataset for regional and national comparison. Evidence ranges from middle/late Bronze Age pits to medieval settlements.

This monograph marks the first presentation of a detailed Classic period ceramic chronology for central and southern Veracruz, the first detailed study of a Gulf Coast pottery production locale, and the first sourcing-distribution study of a Gulf Coast pottery complex.

Excavations of a large part of an extensive Iron Age settlement carried out between 1997 - 1998 at Covert Farm located near Crick in northwestern Northamptonshire.

Excavations of a large Iron Age farming settlement in Northamptonshite spread across five sites, four studied here (The Lodge, Long Dole, Crick Hotel and Nortoft Lane, Kilsby) with Covert Farm, Crick studied in Volume I (9781784912086).

This publication brings to a wider audience important new findings in the fields of medieval pottery and archaeometry. The new data that materials analysis provides about Byzantine ceramics and their production at times supports, modifies, and even contradicts conclusions derived from traditional archaeological methods.

This cohesive edited volume showcases data collected from more than seven thousand ceramic artifacts including pottery, figurines, clay pipes, and other objects from sites across South America. Covering a time span from 900 BC to AD 1500, the essays by leading archaeologists working in South America illustrate the diversity of ceramic provenance investigations taking place in seven different countries. An introductory chapter provides a background for interpreting compositional data, and a final chapter offers a review of the individual projects. Students, scholars, and researchers in archaeological study on the interactions between the indigenous peoples of South America and studies of their ceramics will find this volume an invaluable reference.

Andean Ceramics brings together many important discoveries of the past decade, especially of production loci together with innovative methodologies for their analysis and interpretation. Each chapter is an up-to-date synthesis of one or more of these topics: production technologies, scale and organization of production, and analytical perspectives and methods.