Pottery Technology
Pottery Technology
Secondary Clays and Firings. Low-fire (1,112-2,192 degrees Fahrenheit) clay pottery, such as the terra-cottas found in the Nok culture sites (500 B.C.E.) in what is now Nigeria, came from secondary clays (those containing
[Image not available for copyright reasons]
impurities) that produced reddish, brownish, or even gray colors. These clays were far more widely available to West African potters than were the high-fire (2,192+ degrees Fahrenheit) primary clays, which produced white, light gray, or light pink-colored pottery. Moreover, the secondary clays were more easily molded than the primary. If the clay did not contain enough impurities to keep it from cracking or crumbling during firing, sand, plant fibers, stone grit, or grog (fine broken pieces of unglazed pottery) were added. Pottery finds in West Africa often are in the same place as the iron smiths’ high-fire furnaces. It is uncertain whether the two technologies—ceramics and iron smelting—actually used the same firing process or if the potters used the furnaces at a lower temperature. However, low-fired ceramic work could also be accomplished in the open-pit kiln, where the air-dried clay pieces were
[Image not available for copyright reasons]
[Image not available for copyright reasons]
given their first firing, to the bisque stage, under a pile of fuel, such as wood, dried grasses, or dried dung.
Vessels and Sculptures. Techniques of clay building to generate a vessel or a sculpture, such as a bowl or deep jar, include rolling and placing coils, shaping, modeling, or molding. Rolls of clay can be coiled to form the bottom, sides, shoulder (widest part), neck, and lip of a pot. Then they are joined and shaped into a vessel by pulling the clay, pinching or paddling it, and scraping the interior and exterior. Similarly, a sculpture can be made by shaping a single lump of clay. Both vessels and sculptures can also be made by the technique known as modeling, which includes forming the clay over a desired shape, or inside a shape. In West Africa that shape was usually a carved piece of wood, stone, or another already-shaped ceramic piece. Modeling could also involve making two shapes that would each be half of the final piece. Finally, adding pieces of rolls, dabs, or patches of clay were further ways to sculpt the shape desired.
Decoration Types. Various basic decoration types were in use in West Africa between 500 and 1590 C.E. The simplest was the indenting or shaping with only the potter’s fingers; another was using some object—usually a pointed stick or groove-making tool—to form lines or inverted points or punctuation. The comb technique (individual incising of parallel lines) was used strikingly on sculptures of naturalistic heads in Ife pottery. Paint or ribbons of clay were occasionally added.
Sources
Richard A. Krause, “Pottery Manufacture,” in Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa: Archaeology, History, Languages, Cultures, and Environments, edited by Joseph O. Vogel and Jean Vogel (Walnut Creek, Cal.: Alta-Mira, 1997), pp. 115-124.
D. T. Niane, “Mali and the Second Mandingo Expansion,” UNESCO General History of Africa, Volume IV: Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century, edited by Niane (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 117-171.