West African pottery decorated using roulettes

Anne Haour, Katie Manning, 2010. https://doi.org/10.5284/1000120. How to cite using this DOI

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Anne Haour, Katie Manning (2010) West African pottery decorated using roulettes [data-set]. York: Archaeology Data Service [distributor] https://doi.org/10.5284/1000120

Data copyright © Dr Katie Manning, Dr Anne Haour unless otherwise stated

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University College London
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Resource identifiers

Digital Object Identifiers

Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are persistent identifiers which can be used to consistently and accurately reference digital objects and/or content. The DOIs provide a way for the ADS resources to be cited in a similar fashion to traditional scholarly materials. More information on DOIs at the ADS can be found on our help page.

Citing this DOI

The updated Crossref DOI Display guidelines recommend that DOIs should be displayed in the following format:

https://doi.org/10.5284/1000120
Sample Citation for this DOI

Anne Haour, Katie Manning (2010) West African pottery decorated using roulettes [data-set]. York: Archaeology Data Service [distributor] https://doi.org/10.5284/1000120

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Overview

Roulettes are objects that are impressed onto the surface of a pot before firing to create decorative patterns. The sheer number of objects that can serve as roulettes, and the various manners in which they can be impressed (rolled, rocked, impressed singly or pivoted), make this an extremely versatile technique. Roulettes have been associated with pottery assemblages of several continents for millennia: for example, the Jomon tradition of Japan ca. 9500 bp, and the Corded Ware culture (Schnurkeramikkultur) of Central Europe ca. 4500 bp, are both traditions making use of rolled and single-impressed cord roulettes (see Gosselain et al., in press). Roulettes are also in use currently in some parts of the world, and most particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Materials used today include twisted pieces of cord, carved wooden cylinders, fish bones, hair curlers, folded sections of palm fibres and bicycle springs.

Ethnographic example of a twisted cord roulette and its impression on plastercine, from the collections at the Institut Fondamental d'Afrique noire (IFAN), Dakar, Senegal

Clearly roulette decoration has had both a wide range of variation and a wide appeal to past potters. As a result of this, its study has had a long and distinguished scholarly history, marked both by painstaking description and by broad-ranging theoretical debates. Key sources include Camps-Fabrer (1966), Esaka (1968), Hurley (1979), and Soper (1985). Moreover, roulettes touch on a question close to the heart of many material culture studies: that of style. Debates on this question have been punctuated by significant theoretical and methodological shifts over the decades, and pottery continues to be at the forefront of changing positions (see e.g. Stark 1998; David & Kramer 2001). As a means of marking pottery in a highly visible manner, roulettes deserve full consideration in these debates.

The material presented here is issued from sub-Saharan Africa. Africa takes on a special role in the study of roulettes precisely because rouletting is still a living tradition there; though, one that is in progressive decline, as pottery vessels are increasingly replaced by metal and plastic containers, and new decorative fashions such as painted motifs grow in popularity. African examples can provide a link between past and present and, for this reason, care has been taken, in this archaeologically-focused research group, to consider in detail the evidence and data that are available from ethnographic and anthropological sources.

The images in this database are all issued from West African archaeological contexts. Pottery sherds decorated with different classes of roulette are illustrated: twisted cord, cord-wrapped, braided strip, folded strip, and braided cord. Short notes accompany each image, with the aim of providing a didactic resource for the identification of roulette pottery decoration. For additional images and a more comprehensive review of the ethnographic use of fibre roulettes and their archaeological distribution see Haour et al. In press.

References

Camps-Fabrer, H. (1966) Matière et art mobilier dans la pr&ecute;histoire nord-africaine et saharienne. Paris, Arts et Métiers Graphiques.

David, N. and Kramer, C. 2001. Ethnoarchaeology in action. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Esaka, T. 1968. Decoration techniques. In Kidder, J. E. Prehistoric Japanese arts - Jômon pottery, 273-281. Tokyo and Palo Alto, Kodansha International.

Gosselain, O., Haour, A., MacDonald. K. and Manning, K. in press. Introduction. In Haour, A., Manning, K., Arazi, N., Gosselain, O., Guèye, S., Keita, D., Livingstone Smith, A., MacDonald, K., Mayor, A. McIntosh, S., and Vernet, R. (eds.) African pottery roulettes past and present: techniques, identification and distribution. Oxbow, forthcoming (2010).

Haour, A., Manning, K., Arazi, N., Gosselain, O., Guèye, S., Keita, D., Livingstone Smith, A., MacDonald, K., Mayor, A. McIntosh, S., and Vernet, R. (eds.) In press. African pottery roulettes past and present: techniques, identification and distribution. Oxford, Oxbow.

Hurley, W. M. 1979. Prehistoric Cordage. Identification of Impressions on Pottery. Washington, Taraxacum.

Soper, R. 1985. Roulette decoration on African pottery: technical considerations, dating and distribution. The African Archaeological Review 3: 29-51.

Stark, M. (ed.). 1998. The archaeology of social boundaries, 233-269. Washington and London, Smithsonian Institution Press.

Other useful links

http://www.sru.uea.ac.uk/pottery-research-network.php Project research page

http://cerafim.free.fr/ Céramique Africaine Imprimée research network: parallel complementary work undertaken by an international group of colleagues.

http://www.safa.rice.edu/ The Society of Africanist Archaeologists is an organization of archaeologists, researchers from associated disciplines and others who share an interest in African archaeology and African societies. Membership is international, with participation from Africa, the Americas, Europe and Asia, and is actively involved in research in many African countries.




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