True Colors - Chemists Look at Pottery (Paper)

These guys examine the color intent of Beaker pottery in Northern Spain.

While it's not surprising that the pottery was always red and usually encrusted, it's interesting to take a fragment apart and chemically look at intended color or its post-kiln color of 4.5k years ago.

I've remarked that achieving ideal color was probably difficult for native potter houses due to European geology.  [here]  and [here] The millennia old fragments usually appear pale, pinkish, copper or blood red, as in the Mesetas, but they are always reddish.  It has only been recently that microscopic and chemical analysis has begun to reveal new details about their design.

A Pasted Bohemian Beaker replica.  "Beaker Days, 2005"

Abstract

In this paper we characterise the mineralogical and elemental composition and the colour (CIELab space) of Bronze Age pottery sherds from NW Spain, using X-Ray diffraction, X-Ray fluorescence and reflectance spectroscopy, respectively. For half of the samples we also determined the content in secondary iron oxi-hydroxides (sFe, iron extracted with dithionite-citrate), using atomic absorption. The aim of the investigation was to study the relationship between the colour and the elemental and mineralogical composition, and to explore the intentionality of the resulting colour. Samples had a low luminosity and were located in the quadrant of the CIELab space ranging from red to yellow (h_ab: 0-90°), showing low hue variability but a wider range of variation in chromaticity. In terms of composition they showed a large mineralogical (12 different minerals were identified) and chemical (from acidic/felsic to basic-ultrabasic/mafic compositions) variation.

A principal components analysis using elemental composition and colour parameters demonstrated that luminosity (L*) depends on organic matter (OM) content and to a lesser extent on sFe content. Chromaticity (C*_ab) depends on sFe content, but also on the felsic/mafic relative composition and OM content, while hue (h_ab) is only related to iron mineral phases. We also verified that these general trends differ to a certain extent depending on whether the pottery contains amphibole or not: the effect of sFe on L* and of OM on b* (yellowing) and C*_ab was only detected for pottery sherds without amphibole, while an increase in felsic in relation to mafic minerals has a more decisive effect on the chromaticity (C*_ab) of the amphibolic clays. Thus, colour seems to result from the interplay between i) the original colour of the raw material/clays, ii) compositional factors (overall composition -felsic vs mafic-, and sFe and OM content), and iii) interactions between composition and processing (sFe and firing conditions controlling yellowing). We interpret that there was an intentional selection of raw materials (felsic or mafic) and their processing (addition of iron oxides and organic matter) and a control over the firing conditions in order to give the vessels a specific colour.

The colour of ceramics from Bell Beaker contexts in NW Spain: relation to elemental composition and mineralogy.  Journal of Archaological Science.  Oscar Lantes-Suarez, Beatriz Prieto, M. Pilar Prieto-Martinez, Cruz Ferro-Vazquez, Antonio Martinez-Cortizas  (2014)  [Link]

International Bell Beaker & Egyptian C-Ware Comparison

The Beaker Blog is on the archaeological road to hell.  The Apostasy continues.

Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology UC14285

In the absence of any big archaeological news, I'll give a comparison of Egyptian White Cross-Lined Ware and early Bell Beaker International pottery.

I'm not going to suggest an especially close relationship between the two types, but rather suggest that a relationship is possible and that both typologies, being distinct from other potteries, fit into a stylistic scheme of the Central Saharan Pastoralist Societies.  (Read that carefully)

First, a few things about Egyptian White Cross-Lined (C-Ware).

C-Ware appears only very briefly in Egypt during the pre-dynastic Naqada IC sequence and probably last no more than a few generations to around IIA, possibly slightly overlapping the Gerzean period.
Naqada II probably heralds the arrival of Mespotamian invaders, at least it would appear so, whereas its predecessor, Naqada I, may involve a limited number of individuals integrating into Egyptian society from the Western Desert or the Southwest.

The latest absolute chronologies of the pre-dynastic era have been compressed to about 800 years and have shifted it to the right (Dee et al, 2013)  The exact timeframe in which C-Ware appears is sometime around 3600-3500 B.C.

Of the several daily-use pottery classes in Egypt, C-Ware is generally a mortuary ware and is found in the graves of about a third of the people in several cities.  Overall, the body of the ware is no different than the preceding Badarian and if fact, was probably made by the same potter houses that made the former and common wares in the centuries preceding.

Amratian Naqada IC (Princeton)

The vast majority of C-Ware contains a scheme consisting of triangle, slashed-line and cross motifs, such as the beaker above, but occasionally animals and human figures appear of similar petroglyphic design of the Western Desert (Egypt).  Curiously, great emphasis is given to the Barbary Sheep when non-abstract depictions occur (mostly unique to this style but petering out later on)

Because C-Ware motifs are overlaid on previous pottery bodies, some of the symmetry can be awkward, which along with other archaeological indicators may point to disparity between scheme and body.  C-Ware is red slip burnish with contrasting white paint before firing, although some of it is encrusted with white paste.  C-Ware vases appear only later, but beakers comprise a third and dishes another third, usually one vessel per occupant (no information on sex distribution).

Beaker Supping dish, Rome, 2500-2200 B.C. Vitrbo, State of Lazio, Museum of Rome [Link]

Without further ado, here's some things that are similar between Beaker and C-Ware (and some differences).

1.  Both potteries are always red.  The base coloration was extremely high in the design hierarchy.  Most potteries vary considerably in color.  These two follow strict conformance (regional soil dependent)

Achieving this was difficult for European Beaker potters due to the geology of Europe.  In some cases potters resorted to painting it red.  It's clear, however, that an ideal beaker looks this>

Sardianian Bell Beaker 'coffee cup'

This is especially noteworthy because much of the Beaker pottery was actually manufactured by native European potter houses.  Even with native potter influences, the design was already settled.

2.  White line highlights contrast the base color.  This is usually done through encrustation with white paste in Beaker pottery, C-Ware is usually lined with white slip before firing (although sometimes encrusted).

3.  Triangle, zig-zag and cross motifs are the most common schemes of both.  C-Ware sometimes has less abstract depictions, as does Beaker ware, but C-Ware sometimes also includes animals and human figures.

4.  They occupied a special significance in burial, and one that is apparently foreign to the more localized common ware.  The peculiar pottery is cohesive to a multi-regional identity and occurs in the graves of some people over a large geographical area who possess this identity.

5.  The two potteries appear with the desiccation of the grassy savanna (that became desert).  C-Ware appears around 600-700 years before the first Maritime Iberian Beakers, but this number may yet be compressed with ongoing excavations.

Barbary Sheep with Mountain Triangle Background

6.  Both potteries exhibit foreign elements and native elements within their respective regions.

This last point is crutial and very subtle.  What is most interesting of the two is not where they are similar, but what deviances were not acceptable.

Certain elements of both potteries are variable, such as the adaptation of local shapes, but other elements are more ridged.  An example of this would be the red/white coloration or the motifs.

I've talked repeatedly about functional requirements within a design hierarchy in this blog.  Everything made by men, arrowheads or boats, differ by the need to do specific things in a certain order to satisfy his maker (with the assumption he is rational).  Factors may include efficiency, appearance, weight, performance, material availability, speed of manufacture, training requirement, etc, etc.  So the difference between a leaf-shape shape arrowhead and a barbed arrowhead aren't the result of some cosmic gelatin; instead a close look of their attributes reveal the subtle needs of their maker.

Typology can be a real pain in the ass because you can create a list of similarities between any two items, say pencils and steak knives.  Deciding which similar traits weigh more than others can skew our interpretation of their genetic relationship.  So I understand that an argument could be made for similarities between Beaker ware and Corded Ware, but again the depth of the genetic relationship depends on what and how heavy we weigh each factor.

Once again, there is nothing necessarily connecting these two potteries other than that may have come from the pastoral belt pictured below.  If you look at other pottery from Morocco or the Tassili region of Algeria, its possible to find other variations of this phenomenon.

Cattle Pastoralist Rock Art Belt (Marina Gallinarido)

Why is it more reasonable to believe that the immediate origin of the bell beaker is to be found 6,000 miles away and not a few miles away?