Pottery Art with A Long History III – History of Ceramic Pottery in The World (down)

In this region we can through another method to deduce the ages more accurate, that is analysis the roof beams of these houses. Dr. Douglas in the University of Arizona invented a method of through analyzing the annual rings of the house roof beams to confirm the exact age of the beam. This way not only has fixed on the time frame of the Mayan’s settlement on calendar, but also has determined the corresponding ages of different potteries in the time scope. Compared to the United States Pueblo region, the sediment layers in the Maya region of pottery production were distributed more widely.

In addition to ceramic relic piles, in the ground of squares and buildings as well as tombs left by those upper ranks we also had found the sediment layer of ceramic flakes. All these sediment layers had been found in the Wuwaxiake, these sediment layers described a chronology for the main types of Maya’s pottery.

This chronology has provided us with a basic framework of the Peten region, and the age orders about Kepan will be published too, and other materials come from regions of Pidelasi, Nicholas, Palenque also had been dig out and been arranged well, and a book written about potteries dig out from Yucatan are just on printing process.

And the order of pottery from Zacualpa and Zaculeu are same, on the high ground of Guatemala, and the pottery orders of the formative years of Kaminaljuyu and former classical period were been recorded same.

Viewed from the marked changes of the pottery production in these regions, for the development of the whole Maya’s pottery, a large number of excavations in other areas are very essential, and due to the widely comparability between different areas, and timely amendment in individual areas based on the Maya chronology, all these have shown us with an overall chart of the Maya development.

Through the Maya monument that marked with dates, one day we would finally get an accurate dating standard. The accurate years of many Maya monuments were determined strictly in accordance with the Maya chronology, whose existence are merely used to make the Maya chronology corresponded to the Gregorian calendar, just as we could conclude the accurate age of a tree according to its tree-ring.


The above-mentioned we said are related to the at the types, the complexity, the quantity and specialization of Maya pottery, while they are so agree with the monuments that marked with accurate dates, so that when all the story fragments and all evidences came together, compared with the pottery production industry in other nations of ancient America, and from the pictures of Maya we may get more about the Maya’s pottery production, the origin places and sites of different types of Maya pottery, the industry distribution of Maya pottery and its final decline.

Pottery Art in China with A Long History III – History of Ceramic Pottery in The World (up)

Pottery is the most significant symbol of the immortal ancient culture that passed down by human, and pottery is the best reflection for the progress of human culture, it also marked the culture descension and continuation of human beings.

A heap of pottery fragments has confused us about the Mayan’s previously living sites, but just like as geologist analyzing the different geological periods of the Earth had experienced, we can make use of the same technology of analysis too. The technology, known as "geological setting", followed a unified principle of – materials which produced or formed former will deposited earlier. As a result, the pottery found in the deepest reactor bottom of the sediments is the oldest pottery.

In the areas of pottery makers who lived together, pottery relic piles of ceramic fragments were gradually formed, and mixed with other debris. These relic piles usually were found in exposed places, of which most perishable materials have disappeared. Aside from those relic piles that in rare dry climate or with covers, in those exposed relic piles only those hardly damaged objects could been found, such as stones, shells, bones, as well as ceramic flakes, some of them are valued with archaeological meanings and are most important for the recording of break-off ears.

These relic sites always near to the areas the maker lived in, the depth of which usually as deep as several rules. The cross-section of the sediment has displayed that it is no doubt that the Mayas who lived near to the accumulation site of debris has a long period of history of pottery making. The sediment layer just like the ceramic flakes could provides us a reliable and related order about pottery, but does not offer us with an absolute chronology of the pottery development.

This technology of judging the era according to the typical pottery of various pottery species had improved the Pueblo’s Indian culture in the southwestern United States greatly.

Pottery Art in China with A Long History II --- About Pottery

Pottery refers to the project that with a model of clay, through a processing of pinching, ring forming and molding, then sintered under a temperature of 800-1000 ℃, thus finally formed into a molding, the model body is non-transparent, has tidy poles, and water-retaining, and sounds dull when knocked on it.

Pottery can be divided into groups of coarse ceramic and fine ceramic, colored or white ceramic, naked ceramic or glazed ceramic, and the varieties of which are grey pottery, terracotta, white pottery, painted pottery, black pottery and so on, which are full with thick flavors of life and unique artistic styles.

As seen to the discovery of the ceramic flakes produced in late Paleolithic Age that found in the Nihe district of Hebei province China, from now there is a long history of 11,700 years of the birth of Chinese pottery. As early as in the Shang Dynasty of China, the glazed pottery and hard-glazed pottery which initially possessed the characters of porcelain had just already appeared. The contents expressed by the pottery are also various, such as peoples, animals, pavilions and a variety of utensils used in daily life were all been involved in.

The invention of pottery is an important process of human civilization, it is the first try that human took advantage of natural materials to create a brand-new article in accordance with their own purpose.

People mixed clay with water and use the mixture to produce a variety of utensils and housewares, which formed into ceramics through a process of baking and whose quality changed consequently, it opened a new chapter of human’s using nature and reconstructing nature, it was an important occasion in the development life of human and has historical and epoch-making significance. At the same time, the appearance of pottery also is a mark of the beginning of the Neolithic Age.

The invention of pottery also greatly improved the living conditions of human beings, it opened up a new era in the history of human’s development. However, the invention of pottery is not a patent of ancient ancestors of some or other region or a tribe, it is an invention that could be created out by any ancient agriculture tribes or groups independently in the long-term practice of human.

The appearance of pottery is also one of major stamps of the Neolithic age in China, it enhanced the settlement stability of early humans, and made people’s daily lives more rich and colorful.