This paperback, conceived from a 2008 petrographical conference, comprises sixteen papers, almost all of which (fourteen) are pottery analysis case studies. Geographically, the papers concentrate on material from the central, but mainly eastern, Mediterranean (Italy, Greece, the Levant and Egypt) and south-western USA (Arizona and California); but Europe north and west of the Alps is slightly represented by work on Beakers from Portugal (Jorge), Neolithic wares from southern Hungary (Kreiter et al) and on Anglo-Saxon pottery from northern England (the latter with classical qualitative descriptions by those veterans, Ixer and Vince). An interesting foreword (Whitbread), a straightforward, nice provenancing paper on (provincial) Inka imperial wares from Bolivia (Szilágyi and Szakmány) and a short (but well-deserved) hagiography of ur-petrographer Henry Sorby by Worley complete the volume. The material ranges from the earliest pottery technology (Pentedeka and Dimoula) in northern Greece through Bronze Age and Iron Age around the central sea to thirteenth- to sixteenth-century ad material from the Americas.
It is instructive to compare the reported studies in this volume with those in Recent Developments in Ceramic Petrology (Middleton and Freestone 1991). In both, petrography is used, often successfully, to provide provenances for the pottery and its constituents; in this volume this information is given a far greater sociological gloss. The new volume promises increased petrographical insights into pottery manufacture but those given are the same as in the older volume. It may have to be accepted that deriving a detailed chaîne opératoire is beyond present-day petrographical techniques.
However, ceramic studies now are generally far more sophisticated and rigorous than two decades ago, as typified by the outstanding paper testing the Verde Confederacy model (central Arizona) by Kelley et al. They show how it should be done, not least because they fully understand that a large and dedicated geological sampling programme must lie alongside any pottery work. If only one paper be read, this has to be the one.
The majority of the papers have been written/edited to a consistent formula; this allows the reader to dip into the papers and, I suspect for most, just to read the discussion and conclusions or find useful petrographical techniques. The writing is simple and, apart from a very few non-standard English sentences and spellings, very clear. Vast numbers of data are tabulated and there are many small illustrations and photomicrographs, more than might have been expected, but reproduced in monochrome.
Sadly, the reproduction of these illustrations severely limits their use and hence that of the volume; too many of the maps and site diagrams are so reduced that they can only be read with a hand lens, and then made yet more difficult by the subtle grey shades used to delineate different geological formations. The numerous photomicrographs that could and should have made this a spectacularly important ceramic petrography text are worse; many would only make sense in colour (especially the paired photomicrographs in plane polarized light and crossed polarized light) and with detailed captions, both of which are absent.
The volume clearly shows current methods of analysis and, within it, it is possible to find good examples of all the qualitative and quantitative ceramic petrography techniques. This is its value, but, it could have been so much more.
