Medieval Ceramics Volume 34: Journal of the Medieval Pottery Research Group

In recent years our understanding of the native medieval pottery industries of Scotland has under­ gone a trans-formation due to the application of finance, science and common sense. However there is still a large part of the country where this is not the case and the hapless pottery specialist is presented with assemblages that are dominated by local products that do not appear to change to any great extent over at least a thousand years. This paper will consider the best way forward for understanding such a widespread pottery tradition using currently available scientific techniques for sourcing and dating. Finally discussion will turn to the knotty problem of how to attract the level of funding that will be required to adequately tackle a problem of such scale.

The Udal North, North Uist, dug by Iain Crawford has a continuous structural sequence with artefactual evidence from the late Iron Age to the end of the post- medieval period. All periods produced quantities of handmade pottery, to make it one of the largest rural assemblages in Scotland. This long and remarkable sequence from this one site has the potential to confirm and expand the pottery sequence proposed by Campbell (2002) for the Western Isles. Some of the Udal North pottery was studied about 30 years ago, but the opportunity now exists to date the assemblage scientifically and explore it socially. Research questions include examining the origins of pottery making in the region, the development of pottery making at the site, as well as the continuation of the ceramic tradition to the present day. This paper is an interim summary of what we know to date and what we hope to learn in the future.

The dresser and its ceramics formed a highly significant cultural marker in 19th-century western Britain and Ireland. Excavated transfer-printed, painted, and spongeware vessels recovered from excavations can be contextualized using ethnographic and illustrative material, together with dressers and their contents in museums, to consider ceramics in a range of dynamic relationships. This paper applies the theoretical perspective of Actor Network Theory (ANT) to consider the role of ceramics within western British and Irish 19th-century cottages. Networks of people and things create, in Latour’s terminology, actants they are made to act. Ceramics were not merely passive reflectors of function and status but were active in the negotiations of value and meaning not only in middle class homes but also within even the most impoverished rural cottage.

Publication review

Publication review

Publication review

Constitution Of The Medieval Pottery Research Group

Preliminaries (i.e. coverpage, contents) of Medieval Ceramics 2013