33253 S5006693

Celtic grey pottery from Poland: thrown or not thrown?

Halina Dobrzańska and Jan Piekarczyk

Introduction

Vesseł building methods are a significant source for the reconstruction of the production of pottery, its dy-namics and the level of craft specialization of the pro-ducers. The type of manufacturing techniques is related to the choice of raw materials used for the composition of the pottery fabric. Vessel-building techniques are also related to individual societal traditions and as such can provide valuable data for cuitural studies. The descrip-tion of the techniques employed combined with the mor-phological analysis of pottery is indispensable for provenience studies.

Grey pottery belongs to one of the four groups of La Tóne pottery madę on the wheel, the other three are graphite and painted ware and storage vessels. In the area of the Celtic settlement in southem Poland grey pottery was produced from the fourth century BC to the first decades of the first century AD (Woźniak 1992; Poleska 1996; 236).

The analysis of pottery production techniques and technology largely depends on a proper selection of labo-ratory methods. Zenon Woźniak was well aware of this when he was supervising the thesis of Maria Wirska Parachoniak (1980) which was centred on Celtic pottery-production in southem Poland. This study, published now a quarter of a century ago, is still an important source, especially conceming the characteristics of pottery fab-rics and the selection of raw materials.

In the present article the authors take issue with Wirska-Parachoniak on the technique of building Celtic yessels by means of the potter’s wheel. With regards to grey pottery, M. Wirska Parachoniak based her studies of thin sections by the use of a polarizing mlcroscope. Parallel arrangement of elongated grains and pores in

the vessel walls led her to daim that the pots must have been thrown in which case the vessełs concemed must have been drawn up from a single lump of cłay. in irtdi-vidual cases incoherent arrangement of grains and pores demonstrate that the wheel was used orty to smooth the surface of the freehand madę yesseis (Wirska Parachoniak 1980).

To resoh/e this issue ultrasound was employed. It was proved successful in testing of the grey ceramics dating back to the Roman period (Dobrzańska, Piekarczyk 1999-2000). This analytical technique helped in samp-ling the lower parts of vessels, as well as faciłitating in-terpretation of the measurment data avaiable for Celtic pottery.

Tested vessels

Ninę grey vessels were tested ultrasonically. The pots examined come from settłements in Silesia and Littte Poland. The results for four of them are presented here, the sites being as follows: Radłowice, prov. dolnośląskie, site 8; Roszowicki Las. prov. opolskie, site 29; Pełczyska. prov. świętokrzyskie and Kraków Pleszów, site 17. The vessels examined are all examples of fine pottery or ta-bleware' in terms of their fabric and are dated from the fourth century BC to the beginning of the first century AD. Three sherds are no-context finds and one is from Roszowicki Las — feature no. 7/89*.

* Acknowledgments

We wish to express our sincere thanks to Dr Marek Bednarek, Professor Stanisław Pazda, Dr Paulina Poleska and Marcin Rudnicki MA for submitting spedmens of Celtic grey pottery for examination.