Persian Pottery in the First Global Age: the Sixteenth and Seventeeth Centuries studies the ceramic industry of Iran in the Safavid period (1501–1732) and the impact which the influx of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain, heightened by the activities of the English and Dutch East Indies Companies after c. 1700, had on local production. The multidisciplinary approach of the authors (Lisa Golombek, Robert B. Mason, Patricia Proctor, Eileen Reilly) leads to a reconstruction of the narrative about Safavid pottery and revises commonly accepted notions. The book includes easily accessible reference charts to assist in dating and provenancing Safavid pottery on the basis of diagnostic motifs, potters’ marks, petrofabrics, shapes, and Chinese models.

An Archaeology of Exchange is primarily an archaeology of human sociality and anti-sociality. Nevertheless, archaeological studies of exchange are numerous and varied, and archaeologists do not always approach exchange as a social mechanism, concentrating rather on the cultural, economic or political implications of exchange. Even so, at times it is worth retracing the implicit theoretical steps that archaeologists have taken and look at human sociality through the eyes of exchange as something new. This is undertaken here by concentrating on the exchange of social valuables in the later part of the Late Ceramic Age of the Greater and Lesser Antilles (AD 1000/1100-1492). Questions concerning this exchange are framed in a novel mix of theories such as Costly Signalling Theory coupled with the paradox of keeping-while-giving and the notion of gene/culture co-evolution joined with Complex Adaptive System theory. All these theories can be related back to the concept of exchange as put forward by the French sociologist Marcel Mauss in his famous "Essai sur le don" of 1950. This theoretical framework is put to the test by an extensive case-study of a specific category of Late Ceramic Age social valuables, shell faces, which have an area of distribution that ranges from central Cuba to the Ile de Ronde in the Grenadines. The study of these enigmatic artefacts provides new insights into the nature and use of social valuables by communities and individuals in the Late Ceramic Age.

Prehistoric Cypriot ceramics were widely traded, especially in the late Bronze Age, and constitute an important source of information about international trade and cultural relations in the Bronze and Iron Age eastern Mediterranean. These papers were presented at an international conference held at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in October 1989. Symposium Series II University Museum Monograph, 74

A beautifully illustrated showcase of the rich and varied ceramic tradition of Iran Featuring a broad selection of objects from one of the most distinguished collections of Iranian art, this volume brings together over 1,000 years of Persian Islamic pottery. With more than 500 illustrations, authoritative technical treatises, and insightful commentary, Ceramics of Iran assembles a collection of rarely seen treasures from the Persian world and presents a collective history of its renowned ceramic tradition. Included among its comprehensive catalogue entries are numerous translations of the object’s inscriptions, providing readers with a richer and more detailed understanding of the cultural heritage from which these items are derived. In addition, the book contains new research and material from previously unknown sites. Featuring all new photography of nearly 250 objects, Ceramics of Iran brings the extraordinary contributions of Persian art into a wider historical context, along with a wealth of images to demonstrate the full scope of its intricate beauty.

The transition from the Neolithic period to the Copper Age in the northern Balkans and the Carpathian Basin was marked by significant changes in material culture, settlement layout and organization, and mortuary practices that indicate fundamental social transformations in the middle of the fifth millennium BC. Prior research into the Late Neolithic of the region focused almost exclusively on fortified 'tell' settlements. The Early Copper Age, by contrast, was known primarily from cemeteries such as the type site of Tiszapolgar-Basatanya. This edited book describes the multi-disciplinary research conducted by the Koros Regional Archaeological Project in southeastern Hungary from 2000-2007. Centered around two Early Copper Age Tiszapolgar culture villages in the Koros Region of the Great Hungarian Plain, Veszto-Bikeri and Korosladany-Bikeri, our research incorporated excavation, surface collection, geophysical survey and soil chemistry to investigate settlement layout and organization. Our results yielded the first extensive, systematically collected datasets from Early Copper Age settlements on the Great Hungarian Plain. The two adjacent villages at Bikeri, located only 70 m apart, were similar in size, and both were protected with fortifications. Relative and absolute dates demonstrate that they were occupied sequentially during the Early Copper Age, from ca. 4600-4200 cal B.C. The excavated assemblages from the sites are strikingly similar, suggesting that both were occupied by the same community. This process of settlement relocation after only a few generations breaks from the longer-lasting settlement pattern that are typical of the Late Neolithic, but other aspects of the villages continue traditions that were established during the preceding period, including the construction of enclosure systems and longhouses.

The 23 papers presented here are the product of the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and approaches to the study of kitchen pottery between archaeologists, material scientists, historians and ethnoarchaeologists. They aim to set a vital but long-neglected category of evidence in its wider social, political and economic contexts. Structured around main themes concerning technical aspects of pottery production; cooking as socioeconomic practice; and changing tastes, culinary identities and cross-cultural encounters, a range of social economic and technological models are discussed on the basis of insights gained from the study of kitchen pottery production, use and evolution. Much discussion and work in the last decade has focussed on technical and social aspects of coarse ware and in particular kitchen ware. The chapters in this volume contribute to this debate, moving kitchen pottery beyond the Binfordian ‘technomic’ category and embracing a wider view, linking processualism, ceramic-ecology, behavioral schools, and ethnoarchaeology to research on historical developments and cultural transformations covering a broad geographical area of the Mediterranean region and spanning a long chronological sequence.

This volume brings together examples of the best research to address the complexity of the Caribbean past.

The total ceramic spectrum.