Ceramics Processing – The Issue of Specialization and Division of Materials Research
Ceramics Processing – The Issue of Specialization and Division of Materials Research

Summary/Abstract: Studying ceramic production cannot be separated from studying and perceiving the circumstances in which it is performed. Beside the natural factors that have an influence on those circumstances, social factors, which also include the issues of the specialization of works and the gender and age labor division, are certainly of great importance as well. It is not a rarity that, particularly in the literature of an older date, the knowledge of the gender labor division and specialization in the ceramic production of a local community, originating from ethnological records, is uncritically ascribed to all the other environments in which certain techniques, i.e. technological processes, were used in the past. Ethnoarchaeological research studies of the ceramic technology have, however, shown that it is impossible to give simple and unambiguous answers to these questions. This paper is dedicated to finding out answers to the questions whether vessels made without a mechanical device are always produced by women, and those modelled on the potter’s wheel – by men. Are there opposite cases, too, and why? Is a ceramic vessel the result of the work done by only one person or there are several of them participating in the production chain? What does it depend on and when do differences appear? The offered answers that strive to demonstrate a broader picture of ceramic production and understanding it as a phenomenon can simultaneously serve as the starting point for new research questions aimed to get us closer to the possible models of dynamics in the past when ceramic production is concerned.

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