The Decoration and Firing of Ancient Greek Pottery: A Review of Recent Investigations

The wealth and diversity of decoration on Greek pottery continues to attract science-based attention. The availability of increasingly powerful analytical techniques has allowed the nature of the decoration to be investigated in ever-finer detail, down to the nano-particle level. Such work has gone hand in hand with replication experiments ranging from sourcing raw materials to experimental firing. As a result, there is a fuller understanding of the many material and other factors controlling the quality of a range of painted or coloured decorations, most notably black gloss, seen to best effect in the Black and Red Figure–style vases of Attic potters-painters in the sixth to fourth centuries BC. Light has also been shed on the manner in which a few of these craftspeople adapted established techniques to give special effects.

Reviewing the progress made on the decoration and firing of several pottery classes as well as other ceramics, such as terracotta figurines, this paper places this information into context in two ways. On the one hand, it covers the corresponding evidence for the decoration and firing of pottery of the Greek Neolithic and Bronze Age to chart diachronically the craft's technological development. On the other hand, it considers recent archaeological evidence for ceramic production.