Book Review: Searching for Structure in Pottery Analysis: Applying Multiple Scales and Instruments to Production

By Charles Kolb, Honorary Associate Editor

Searching for Structure in Pottery Analysis: Applying Multiple Scales and Instruments to Production. Alan F. Greene and Charles W. Hartley (eds.). Series: New Directions in Anthropological Archaeology. Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK: Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2022. 256 pp., 75 figures. ISBN-13 (Hardback) 9781781790533 Price (Hardback) £85.00 / $110.00 ISBN (eBook) 9781800500013 Price (eBook) rrp [recommended retail price]. Individual £85.00 / $110.00 ePub ISBN 9781800500419.

This is a long, somewhat detailed, 7,300+ word review of Searching for Structure in Pottery Analysis which derives its title from the work of a pioneering materials scientist, Cyril Stanley Smith 4 October 1903 - 25 August 1992) author of The Search for Structure, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1981), a British metallurgist and historian of science who worked on the Manhattan Project, founded the Institute for the Study of Metals at the University of Chicago, and moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961. At MIT he focused on the structural analysis of a variety of archaeological materials, including some work on the compositional analysis of ceramics and influenced several generations of students at MIT.

The original title for the Greene and Harley edited book, Renewing the “Search for Structure”: New Techniques and New Frameworks in Instrumental Ceramics Analysis stemmed from a paper of the same title, “Renewing the ‘Search for Structure”: New Techniques and New Frameworks in Instrumental Ceramics Analysis,” coauthored by Greene and Hartley, and presented at the Society for American Archaeology’s 74th annual meeting in April 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia, and two other presentations: “The Structure of Ceramic Analysis: Multiple Scales and Instruments in the Analysis of Production,” coauthored by Greene and Hartley, and “From Structure to Composition and Back: Digital Radiography and Computed Tomography,” written by Hartley, Greene, and Paula N. Doumani (since then Doumani Dupuy). Both presentations were at the 75th Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in St. Louis, Missouri in April 2010. The 2010 oral papers have the same titles and authorships as the chapters in the 2022 volume.

Having attended almost all of the oral presentations at these SAA meeting, I wanted to review the Greene and Hartley compendium for some time (actually more than a decade) for the readers of the SAS Bulletin and have been in pursuit of a published copy, but the tome has had a long and complex “publication history.” It has been listed as “published,” then “delayed,” “backlisted,” and later “delisted” by a number of booksellers including Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, and ecommerce pioneer used book dealer AbeBooks.com located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. since December 2008), and ISD, Distributor of Scholarly Books. UK bookseller WHSmith listed it as “available: dispatched within 1-2 weeks” but then listed the book as “out of stock.” The publication was initially listed as due on 06/01/2015, then 01/09/2019, but changed to 01/01/2021, redated to 02/01/2021 preordered on 4/27/2021, then 11/01/2021, but delisted on 11/14/2021 by B&N after taking pre-orders beginning in 2015 and recently as 2020: “We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock.” The Table of Contents has been available on the publisher’s website since 2017 https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/renewing search-structure. Not to be denied and unsure of its real status with the publisher, in 2016 (and again in 2018) I emailed the publisher, both editors, and each of the authors listed in the publication prospectus and received replies from one editor (the book was still in an “editing state”), none from the publisher, and more than half of the authors who variously reported: “did not know,” “disappointed about delays,” “unsure,” and

considered his/her manuscript a “wasted effort.”; I’ll not share their confidential remarks about trials and tribulations. Three of the authors, who happen to also be my long-time friends, candidly wrote lengthy, detailed responses. Since my inquiries, the book title has reverted to Searching for Structure in Pottery Analysis: Applying Multiple Scales and Instruments to Production. Equinox Publishing Ltd is an independent academic publisher founded in London in 2003 by Janet Joyce, an experienced publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich> Blackwell Publishing> Pinter Publishers> Continuum > Equinox, and, since mid-2011, based in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/about/. In early December 2022, Amazon.com listed the book and I acquired a copy within a week.

Given the hiatus between oral presentation and publication, I wanted to learn if any (or most or all) of the individual contributions had been refreshed or updated with new material since the oral presentations a dozen years ago and if editing had been suggested and followed or not. This required some sleuthing by your reviewer with varying degrees of success. One of the original contributors had been withdrawn and the editors substituted their own “Conclusion.” In examining the published resumes or CVs of the two editors, I saw several issues likely related to the delays in editing and publishing the volume that were out of the hands of the publisher. Employment records of the editors showed some discontinuities and in one instance it appeared that employment and/or finances may have interrupted an earlier completion of a doctoral degree.

Alan F. Greene earned a double BA in Anthropology and Near Eastern Studies from Johns Hopkins University (2001), and received his Master of Arts (2005) and Ph.D. in Anthropology from University of Chicago (2013). He was a Graduate Researcher (2005-2014) at Argonne National Laboratory, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University (2013-2016), and an affiliate researcher at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World for more than six years. As an anthropological archaeologist, his research focuses on the relationship between everyday aspects of the material economy, such as ceramic containers, and the macro-scale political-economic parameters of emergent complex polities in the Bronze Age South Caucasus. Greene specializes in the “sociobiographical anthropology of craft goods,” as well as compositional and structural methods of materials analysis, tracing artifacts through habitual production regimes, spheres of exchange and consumption trends in ancient societies. His research focuses on the relationship between everyday aspects of the material economy such as ceramic containers, and the macro-scale political-economic parameters of emergent complex polities in the Bronze Age South Caucasus. Greene has been involved with a number of projects, https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Alan-Greene-2038288384 among them The Joint Armenian-American Project for the Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies (ArAGATS) (2003-present); The Recursive-Relational Archaeological Database (ReArch) (2010-present); and The Communal Archaeological Databank of the South Caucasus (CADSoC) Communal Archaeological Databank of the South Caucasus (CADSoC) (2014-present). He served as a co-director of the Making of Ancient Eurasia” (MAE) Project (2012-2016), http://mae.uchicago.edu and Twitter MAE Project @MAEarchaeometry, an interdisciplinary research collaboration of anthropologists from the University of Chicago, Washington University in Saint Louis, Cornell University, Idaho State University, and materials scientists at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and the Australian Synchrotron investigating early ceramic and metal technologies in the Eurasian steppes, the Caucasus, and Central China. This project offers opportunities for new archaeometric analytical techniques, such as digital radiography (DR), X-ray computed tomography (XCT), and small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS/WAXS), to be developed and applied in direct conjunction with anthropological problems. He has published his research in the Journal of Archaeological Science and Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. Green also Was New York University Manager, Heritage Resources at ESI, Environmental Solutions & Innovations, Inc., Cincinnati, Ohio; he is currently listed as Adjunct Professor of Social Studies and Anthropology, Bard High School Early College, Queens, NY (October 2022-present) and has posted his Register of Professional Archaeologists (RPA) listing on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanfgreene/. Greene is also the author of “Synchrotron Radiation,” a chapter in Alice Hunt’s edited The Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Ceramic Analysis (Oxford Handbooks, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 447-466. SR is a non- destructive tool for analyzing archaeological pottery whereby accelerated particle energies, dominantly hard X-ray beams, are used to investigate a wide variety of pottery features, traditions, and technologies. Charles W. Hartley received his BA in anthropology from New Mexico State University; an AM from the University of Chicago in 2006, and a doctorate from Chicago expected in 2014 and received in 2020. His anthropological archaeology dissertation “Community, Pottery, and Political Culture: Crafting the State in the Luoyang Basin, North China, 3000–1500 BCE” examines the role pottery, as a class of political/material culture, plays in the development of solidarity and identity amongst communities in and around the Luoyang Basin with the florescence of the Erlitou polity that marks the end of the Neolithic in China. He is particularly interested in the role of techniques as markers, often unintentionally, of communal or factional affiliations, and the role such “everyday” objects play in building political coalitions and consensus. Hartley conducted field work in Belize, Oregon, China, and California; presented oral papers and posters at professional meetings, https://chicago.academia.edu/CharlesHartley; since 2005 he has taught at DePaul University, University of Chicago-The College, University of Illinois at Chicago, California State University-East Bay, and Elon University. In addition, he has served as Chinese translation editor for the Henan Province Institute of Archaeology and Cultural Relics, and The Archaeology of Power and Politics in Eurasia: Regimes and Revolutions (Charles W. Hartley, G. Bike Yazicioğlu, and Adam T. Smith, eds.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Notably, Hartley was Guest Graduate Student Appointment, Argonne National Laboratory, Nuclear Engineering Division (2005-2012) and served as co- organizer with Alan Greene of the SAA symposium “Searching for Structure in Ceramic Analysis: Frameworks and Techniques in the Investigation of Pottery” in 2010, as well as a co- director of the Making of Ancient Eurasia (MAE) Project (2012-2016), http://mae.uchicago.edu and Twitter MAE Project @MAEarchaeometry. See his last published CV (2014) for other details: https://chicago.academia.edu/CharlesHartley/CurriculumVitae. Searching for Structure in Pottery Analysis addresses the theoretical and methodological imperatives involved in (re)integrating descriptive, structural, and compositional analytical methods in a series of contributions from a diverse group of experts in archaeological pottery. The contributors focus on those forms of analysis which investigate structural characteristics of ceramics and the methodologies that link such structural characteristics with the typological and compositional data that compose the majority of evidence in contemporary ceramic analyses. The volume contains a “Table of Contents,” a “Foreword” by Heather Lechtman, eleven stand- alone chapters (each with Acknowledgments, an About the Author statement, and a list of References), a “List of Figures and Tables,” and an “Index.” The chapter contents range geographically from the Americas eastward to East Asia and temporally from the Old World Neolithic and Bronze Age to Post-Contact North America. The chapters’ essays are organized into two sections: the first focuses on how the practices of ceramic production and the structures they generate enable inferences about the social relations between producers and consumers of pottery; while the second focuses on the role structure plays in the refraction and maintenance of different forms of social grouping and identity. These two themes serve as orienting foci for a broad set of heuristic and technical tools that have the potential to alter how archaeologists extract and identify the social information captured in the multifarious properties of pottery and transform contemporary understandings of the different roles ceramics played in past societies. The analytical tools range from binocular and petrographic microscopic to NAA, SEM, EDS/WDS, XRF, and PIXE. The integrated employed by the contributors feature multimodality, microscopy and quantification, and mineral identification and qualification; a schematic of data iterations appears in Chapter 1, Figure 1.3. The “Foreword” to the volume (pp. xi-xiii, 3 references) is by Heather Lechtman, an American materials scientist and archaeologist, who is also the Director, Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received her BA from Vassar College (1956) and her MA and diploma in art and archeological conservation from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (1966). Lechtman became a professor at MIT in 1974, Director of the Center in 1977, was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1984, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1988. Lechtman’s specialty is prehistoric Andean metallurgy. Her 2022 comments are revised from the previous manuscript and focus on Cyril Stanley Smith’s life. She cites Smith’s significant1968 article in Science, his 1980 book, and mentions The Search for Structure (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981). Smith was a pioneering materials scientist who brought an important focus on structure to studies of a variety of archaeological materials, the contributors emphasize those forms of analysis which investigate structural characteristics of ceramics and the methodologies that link such structural characteristics with the typological and compositional data that compose the majority of evidence in contemporary ceramic analyses. Chapter 1 “The Structure of Ceramic Analysis: Multiple Scales and Instruments in the Analysis of Production” (pp. 1-23, 3 figures, 1 table, 102 references) by Alan F. Greene and Charles W. Hartley. Greene is listed as an affiliate researcher at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World; Hartley as University of Chicago. Both are mentioned as co- directors of the “Making of Ancient Eurasia” (MAE) Project. The contributors to this thought- provoking volume, inspired by the work of Cyril Stanley Smith, assess the relevance, neglect, and/or resurgence of visual and instrumental pottery analyses by examining multi-scalar, nested sets of physical parameters and their relationships made permanent by firing. The assessments focus on fabrics, aplastics, inclusions, slips, matrices, and arrangements of macro-molecules as well as vessel walls, appendages, and orifices. They make the distinction between “structural” and “compositional” and trace the co-development of these approaches and their related analytical instrumentations in the early to mid-twentieth century, as well as gradually diverging trajectories from the latter part of the century to today. The recent trend toward compositional, and especially geochemical, study is evaluated critically in light of important developments in the “anthropology of technology and the accumulated archaeological research on craft production and potting practices.” This introduction outlines an integrated approach that combines elemental data with information pertaining to paste preparation, formation, decoration, and firing techniques in an anthropological effort to delineate the socioeconomic, learning, and political aspects of specific pottery industries. Drawing on their work with the “Making of Ancient Eurasia” Project, the authors contend that the inclusion of “structural” data is indispensable to forming a systematic understanding of ceramic production globally across geographies, political economies, and craft traditions. Multi-scalar digital radiographic analysis has influenced their thinking about both ceramic structure and composition, and they demonstrate how the macro- and micro-scale variation revealed in ceramic fabrics and formation techniques has led them to call into question the treatment of structure and composition as two discrete domains of analytical characterization. The most recent citation is a publication from 2017. Chapter 2 “From Texture to Temper: A Multi-scalar Approach to Identifying Variation in Clay Preparation Strategies” (pp. 24-40, 5 figures, 2 tables, 37 references) by MaryFran Heinsch, who was at the University of Chicago in anthropology 2000-2015, and is currently a Senior Analyst at Concentrix in Cincinnati, Ohio. She has worked in North America, Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, and is interested in employing materials science perspectives in investigations of social patterns in Bronze and Iron Age ceramic production. Kura-Araxes pottery from Early Bronze Age (EBA) sites in the eastern Caucasus and eastern Anatolia have been previously assessed from aesthetic and morphological rather than technical perspectives. This chapter provides a case study assessing Kura-Araxes fine ware and fine ware from the Velikent site in order to determine the movement of people versus the importation of pottery. Variations in clay preparation techniques can indicate diversity in social relations of craft learning and labor, or adaptation to inconsistencies in raw materials. The finished and fired structure of pottery can mask or even destroy evidence for clay preparation techniques, while conventional petrographic or other textural analyses of ceramic fabrics can provide useful information on only a fraction of the original paste components. A sample of 382 sherds from seven sites was imaged using xeroradiography to evaluate textural contrasts. These differences were further examined using microscopy, SEM-EDS, and INAA. Clay samples from each site were also evaluated in terms of texture, mechanical properties and composition using similar analyses. The use of these combined and multi-scalar analyses reveals significant diversity in clay preparation strategies between the sites in the study. In addition, the findings suggest greater diversity in clay preparation within widely distributed Kura-Araxes ware. The author assesses structure and the interpretation of social and material interactions in her study of raw clay plasticity, trace element distinctions, and elutriation techniques in clay preparation. She discusses the implications for production and social and material interactions and the movement of people between the sides and concludes that both types of pottery could have been produced together at the sites where they were found. Her most recent bibliographic citations date to 2012. Chapter 3 “Producing Structure: The Role of Ceramic Production in Understanding Chaco- period Communities in the American Southwest” (pp. 41-58, 5 figures, 1 table, 53 references) by Andrew I. Duff holds a doctorate from Arizona State University and is an Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Anthropology at Washington State University. Duff has directed research projects in the North American Southwest for two decades, Chaco period great houses and community organization in west-central New Mexico for 13 years, and recently research in Ethiopia and Thailand on megaliths. Pottery assemblages from two neighboring Chaco-period (AD 1050-1130) communities located in west-central New Mexico, USA were selected to examine different components of community organization. The communities are located at the interface of two of the American Southwest’s primary archaeological culture areas -- Mogollon and Pueblo; the pottery assemblages include vessels attributed to both. Duff discusses the theoretical background of his work and asks the question: what is “style” and what does it reveal about social phenomena that are unobservable in the archaeological record? He notes that there are large behavioral and ideational components in pottery production. His research focuses on the Chaco era and residential settlement increases using the case study of Cox Ranch Pueblo, a “typical” Chaco great house community with 15 rooms and the Cerro Pomo great house with 40 rooms. The primary research questions asked of these assemblages include whether they were locally produced by co-residing groups of people who came from different regions, and whether those peoples continued to reproduce vessels using the conventions of their homelands. Painted utilitarian pottery is used to assess the contemporaneity and attributes of the unpainted pottery assemblage, and coil thickness and indentation frequency are used to assess if manufacturing traditions differ by wares attributed to each culture area. Coil size, sherd thickness, and apparent porosity measures are used to explore vessel function, and oxidation analyses are used to assess clays used in vessel manufacture. A total of 1,224 specimens and 101 raw clay sources were studied with oxidation levels determined by refiring that exceeded original firing temperatures; Munsell color groups were identified. Brown and Grey ware jars served the same function but were constructed using different clays. Combined, these analyses suggest that groups from two distinct manufacturing traditions co-resided within these communities, that they manufactured unpainted jars using the conventions of their areas of origin, and that they continued to do so throughout the histories of these communities. These long-lasting traditions of manufacture served to reproduce an element of difference in items used daily, while larger scales of social action signal greater communal unity; both processes are argued to be accurate reflections and embodiments of social relations. The most recent citation in this chapter dates to 2014. Chapter 4 “Ceramic Production and Society in the Late Majiayao Culture of Northwest China” (pp. 59-74, 5 figures, 42 references) by Michele L. Koons and Jade d’Alpoim Guedes. Koons received her doctorate from Harvard University in 2012 and currently is Curator of Archaeology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, specializing in Andean archaeology, ancient complex societies, archaeology of desert environments, geophysical/remote sensing archaeology, and ceramic analysis. Jade D’Alpoim Guedes earned a Ph.D. in anthropological archaeology from Harvard University in 2013 and is a tenured Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She is a paleoethnobotanist and human osteologist who studies how humans adapted their foraging practices and agricultural strategies to new and changing environments. Her primary region of focus is the Tibetan Plateau, especially China, but also Nepal, Thailand, and Pakistan The authors discuss the preliminary results from their analyses of manufacturing techniques used to fabricate Majiayao culture Hu storage vessels, an important feature in Neolithic burials in Northwest China. Previous research is summarized, and the characteristics of the graves and grave goods are detailed and the geometrically painted, flat-bottomed Hu storage jars are described and illustrated in color. Hu vessels were used in life and in death by both elites and commoners. Radiographic studies indicated distinctions between Banshan phase vessels (lighter in weight, more easily handled fabricated in three phases of coiling) and the later Machang phase vessels (coiled in a single event with varied significantly in quality and more manufacturing defects). Analyses also included production technologies assessed through experimental archaeology. The increase in the number of vessels between the Banshan and Machang phases of the Majiayao culture demonstrates a change in the value and production processes used to manufacture these vessels. By the Machang phase, Hu vessels were hoarded as prestige items and used only for funerary purposes by less skilled persons. The latest bibliographic citation dates to 2007. Chapter 5 “From Structure to Composition and Back: Digital Radiography and Computed Tomography -- Some Cases for Anthropological Contemplation” (pp. 75-90, 5 figures, 1 table, 47 references) by Charles W. Hartley, Alan F. Greene, and Paula N. Doumani Dupuy. The latter received her Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis in 2014 is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan. The most recent citation dates to 2014. Among her research publications in Russian and English languages (https://www.doumanidupuy.com/#publications), is Greene, A. F., Hartley, C. W., Doumani Dupuy, P. N., Chinander, M. (2017) The Digital Radiography of Archaeological Pottery: Programs and Protocols for the Analysis of Production, Journal of Archaeological Science 78:120-133 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2016.11.00 The authors state that radiography is a powerful tool for assessing fabrication techniques, paste preparation, raw material, voids, and the internal structures of vessels. They discuss the elaboration of radiographic pottery analysis as a structure-oriented technique with an emphasis on its newer iterations in two-dimensional image digital radiography (DR) and X-ray computed tomography (XCT). XCT has been little used in archaeological analysis. The benefits of digital radiography include set up time, and the storage and preservation of images. The authors present several important alterations to their initial thinking about “structural” and “compositional” data in archaeometric and archaeological theory that have been provoked by our interaction with DR and XCT analysis over the last ten years. In so doing, they hope to show how a renewed focus on ceramic structure can bring equal weight to structure and composition in pottery analysis, and facilitate a program of research that emphasizes the social import of the vessel as product, tool, and technology. Initially, they briefly review methods of DR and XCT analysis, as well as their common applications and requirements in the study of archaeological pottery, and provide a few specific examples of the secondary data produced by radiographic and tomographic imaging. The authors have worked with assemblages from three distinct Eurasian locales incorporating diverse research questions. The case studies include: 1) Tsaghkahovit Plain in Armenia: three production types of Late Bronze Age pottery; 2) Semirech’ye Region in Kazakhstan: Late and Final Bronze Age fine ware jars, thick walled globular cooking jars used by pastoralists, and a coarse ware; and 3) Luoyang Basin, China: Longshan period Neolithic vessels. Lastly, they provide insights from their radiographic research in order to contribute to the more general discussion about structure and composition discussed in this volume. The most recent citation dates to 2014. Chapter 6 “Coiling on the Wheel: The Sociopolitical Implications of a Particular Formation Technique in Bronze Age Crete” (pp. 91-111, 4 figures, 3 tables, 66 references) by Ina Berg, Senior Lecturer in Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Manchester. Berg was educated at the Universities of Heidelberg (Classical Archaeology, Ancient History and Ancient Greek) and Cambridge (M.A. in Classics, 1994, Ph.D. in Archaeology, 2000). She has written four books and 24 papers (https://manchester.academia.edu/InaBerg) and her research focuses on the Cyclades in the Middle and Late Bronze Age research focus has been on the application of scientific techniques to ceramics. Berg is also the author of “The Potter’s Wheel” (Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, 2nd ed., Cham: Switzerland: Springer, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319- 51726-1_3443-1. In her research on the Minoan culture area, 7000-1470 BC, she notes that little is known about the social organization of the Minoan Bronze Age. Berg points out that clay vessels can be made with a wide variety of distinct forming techniques or combinations of two or more techniques. The most common ways of making pots during the Cretan Bronze Age were wheel-throwing and coiling. And she reviews data on the reconstruction of the potters’ wheel and the development of wheel heads, notably on the characteristics of three common handmade and two wheel-made forming techniques (pp. 95-98, Table 6.2). Thanks to X-ray studies, macroscopic inspection, and experimental archaeology, “wheel-coiling”-- a technique that combines hand-building and wheel-throwing techniques at different stages of the forming process -- has recently been recognized as an additional popular forming technique in the Aegean (Berg 2009). Berg reviews (Table 6.3) the time needed to produce coiled vessels among the Shipibo-Conibo (taken from Dean Arnold 1985: Tables 8.2 and 8.2); and vessel dimensions and time throwing, and height range of handmade and wheel-thrown vessels from Crete. Tracing the emergence and continuity of these different techniques allows us to suggest hypotheses about their relationship to each other, their socio-political meaning, and the organization of pottery production more generally. She demonstrates that wheel-coiling is a technique that emerged at the same time as wheel-throwing and continued to be utilized throughout the Bronze Age. Unlike wheel-throwing, wheel-coiling was employed for the full range of vessels and was uniquely adapted to gain the greatest possible advantage from the slowly revolving potter’s wheel. Although new potting techniques can be the “makers of social change,” she doubts that there were Near Eastern antecedents and also questions that the palace served as innovators and prime movers because palaces were the primary consumers and not in control of production. Wheel- based techniques have often been linked to the emergence of the Cretan palaces and the desire of elites to enhance their social standing through provision of specialized craft products, the existence of highly specialized, independent pottery production since the Final Neolithic undermines this popular assumption. Her most recent bibliographic citation in this contribution dates to 2012. Chapter 7 “(Ceramic) Structure and (Communities of) Practice in the Bronze Age Black Sea” (pp. 112-129, 3 figures, 1 table, 122 references) by Alexander A. Bauer. He received his Ph.D., from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006, and is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Bauer co-directs, with Owen Doonan, the Sinop Region Archaeological Project (SRAP) on the Black Sea coast of Turkey and since 2005 he has been the editor of the International Journal of Cultural Property. Bauer writes that the neglect of structure-oriented approaches to ceramic analysis and recent emphasis on compositional data has left archaeologists without a full range of analytical tools to investigate the practice of pottery making. He notes that multi-dimensional and multi-scalar analyses of ceramic structure can yield important information about the manufacturing processes employed in their production. The identification of such practices have allowed archaeologists to make inferences about the technological and social choices people in the past may have made in producing material culture, and how those choices may have acted as statements of both individual and group identity. Within such analysis, the concept of “communities of practice,” originally developed as a theory of social learning, may be particularly helpful for understanding the formation of community identities through craft production. Using a chaîne opértoire approach informed by the concept of “communities of practice,” he presents the results of analytical studies of prehistoric pottery-making practices from several communities along the Black Sea coast in order to interpret the emergence of shared pottery traditions across the region. He details the geographical and chronological parameters of the region and discusses the problem of materiality and agency in archaeological studies, notably the Early Bronze Age pottery technology in three communities: 1) Sinope, Turkey; 2) Dniester River Valley, and Caucasian Coast. His analysis, in conjunction with Pamela Vandiver’s work when she was Still at the Smithsonian Laboratory (2002-2003), included macro- and microscopic examinations plus Xeroradiography and SEM/EDS analyses of Chalcolithic, Early Bronze Age, Middle-Late Bronze Age pottery making practices in the Black Sea regions. Bauer suggests that from the end of the 4th to the early 3rd millennium BC a distinct and shared “Black Sea culture” developed across the region as a result of increased social interaction and in response to larger, interregional dynamics. This case study illustrates how the integration of multi-scalar technological practice analysis with theories of craft production can identify patterns of social relations and identity in the past. The latest bibliographic citation dates to 2012. Chapter 8 “Laterality and Directionality in Pottery Painting and Coiling” (pp. 130-146, 4 figures, 4 tables, 32 references) by Kathryn A. MacFarland, who received her doctorate from the University of Arizona in 2017. She currently is the Manager at Arizona State Museum and her research interests, derived from her Master’s thesis and dissertation, include the complex and dynamic roles of religion and ritual behavior as a contributing binding force in the differentiated nomadic Iron Age (ca. 1,000 - 100 BCE) landscape spanning from modern-day Ukraine to Mongolia. This chapter focuses on her research in the American Southwest. Experimental archaeology and open learning frameworks (see the related publications of Patricia Crown, Kelley Ann Hays-Gilpin, Barbara Mills, Hélène Wallaert-Pêtre, and Maria Nieves Zedeño, among others) show the great variability in the way a specific task can be completed, while a closed learning framework allows little variation. Ethnographic observations indicate that there is a high degree of variability in the execution of tasks within the process of pottery manufacture, and that learning construction techniques requires more structure than learning decoration techniques. In MacFarland’s project, the consistency of the directionality (clockwise versus counterclockwise) of painted lines on polychrome vessels and coiled bases of corrugated pottery were studied to determine tolerance within an open or closed cultural learning framework, and the degree of openness. An experiment was carried out which linked directionality on pots with the laterality of the potter in an open system. These results were then compared with data from archaeological pots from sites in the Point of Pines area, east-central Arizona. Maverick Mountain, Point of Pines Polychrome, McDonald, and Point of Pines Corrugated ceramics were used to extrapolate artistic tolerance with degrees of variation within and between types. She determined that it was more useful to analyze the structure of the pot itself (coiling) than the decoration (framing lines) and that there was less variability among left-handed rather than right- handed persons. There was no profound variation in directionality in the Maverick Mountain and Point of Pines vessels. Her most recent citation dates to 2006. Chapter 9 “What a Difference Structure Makes: Material Styles of Syrian Caliciform Ware Identified through Ceramic Petrography” (pp. 147-165, 5 figures, 3 tables, 57 references) by Sarah R. Graff, who received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2006. Currently, She is a Senior Honors Faculty Fellow at Barrett, The Honors College within Arizona State University, where she is also affiliated with the School of Human Evolution and Social Change and with the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict. Ceramic petrography makes it possible to investigate the chaîne opértoire, or series of actions and choices made during the production process of ceramic artifacts. Such structural analysis can help identify different material styles in ceramic groups that may have previously been seen as homogeneous. Using a case study from Orates River Valley of northwestern Syria, she explored how ceramic petrography can move beyond typologies and provenience and begin to answer questions about specific economic practices, such as state control over the production of ceramic containers. The analysis is based on previous petrographic research of Early Bronze Age IVB (2300-2000 BC) ceramics which produced paste recipes via 20 thin sections and also employed studies of raw materials (clays, marls, and aplastics) overall using INAA, XRF, and ICP-MSR. During the late third millennium BC in northwestern Syria, the state of Ebla was powerful and had connections to other political and economic centers in the region. One type of ceramic container that is a marker for this period, and is directly associated with the city-state of Ebla, is the Calciform Ware cup/goblet which has five recipes. Many archaeologists characterize this ware as standardized and mass produced across the extent of the Ebla state. Ceramic petrography of painted Caliciform Ware from the Ghab, located within the territory of the Ebla state, indicates non-standardized production, despite the homogenous forms and decorative patterns. Examining structured elements, construction practices, and choices made by the potters provided sociocultural information that complements the compositional data. The study emphasizes the need to study ceramic structures across the political landscape in detail to fully understand processes of production and what that means for questions of state control. The most recent citation dates to 2014. Chapter 10 “X-ray Fluoroscopy in Your Own Backyard: A Method for Analyzing Ceramic Formation Techniques” (pp. 166-184, 5 figures, 2 tales, 83 references) by Erin N. Hegberg and Philip H. Heinz. Hegberg received her doctorate from the University of New Mexico in 2022 (https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1223&context=anth_etds), specializing in 19th century historical archaeology focused on New Mexican Hispanic and Pueblo ceramics and their relationships between learning lineages, motor skills, and the production of social identity. Her interests include relationships between material culture and identity, between local and regional identities, and between producers and consumers. Heintz is a professor emeritus in the department of diagnostic radiology at the University of New Mexico where he was the program director for the medical physics program and, hence, has particular interest in radiographic image processing. Hegberg writes that petrography, INAA, and ICP-MS provide valuable information about material culture and ceramic trade but need to be paired with structural analyses for a more comprehensive assessment of the ceramic production sequence. Her research problem focuses on 19th century trends in the formation of New Mexican Hispanic and Pueblo ceramics to analyze the relationship between learning lineages, motor skills, and the production of social identity. Professor Heintz provided the medical digital X-ray fluoroscopy. The authors provide the theoretical context, relevant background on Territorial New Mexican history from 1821 to 1912, and the research design and analytical methods, and project goals – the latter is to determine the utility and limitations of digital X-ray imaging of coil and scrape, paddle and anvil, and other possible techniques. Hispanic pottery types have traditionally been treated as distinct from Pueblo wares, but current understandings of the social basis of that distinction remain poor. The analytical sample consists of 112 sherds from four sites. Drawing on previous research showing that formation techniques such as coiling, slab building, or molding are directly related to learning lineages and motor skills, they use medical X-ray fluoroscopy to compare the formation techniques of Hispanic and Pueblo ceramics as part of a more general analysis of social groupings and identities in Territorial New Mexico. The results suggest that variations in Hispanic and Pueblo potting may lie at production foci other than the formation stage. Multiple plain ware formation traditions were active at the sites in the sample and comparisons with Owen Rye’s (1977) estimates underscored the importance of structural analysis on ceramic studies. The chapter bibliographic references are through 2012. Chapter 11 “Conclusion: A New Search for Research” (pp. 185-191, 7 references, the most recent is dates to 2018) by editors/authors Greene and Hartley. The editors review and summarize the salient points of the contributors’ chapters and assert that including structural analyses in ceramic studies can “renew” pottery studies, contending that assessment is greater than the sum of their parts. They also discuss data parallax and two-dimensional radiographs and conflicting and conflated data sets as well as future directions in structural analysis. In addition they note that the utilization of optical microscopy, petrography, ICP-MS, and ICP-AES can benefit from a refocus on structural analysis. They write that: “This volume is not the end of the discussion on structural analysis, but the beginning.” Hence, the inclusion of structural data within “traditional” studies and studies that utilize archaeometric data but restrict themselves can dramatically improve the descriptive and interpretive power of ceramic research. The original discussant for the conference papers apparently declined to have his/her conclusions published. Searching for Structure in Pottery Analysis: Applying Multiple Scales and Instruments to Production is the fourth addition to the New Directions in Anthropological Archaeology series, edited by Thomas E. Levy, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Judaic Studies at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). The distinguished Editorial Board includes Guillermo Algaze, University of California, San Diego; Geoffrey E. Braswell, University of California, San Diego; Paul S. Goldstein, University of California, San Diego; Joyce Marcus, University of Michigan; and Charles Stanish, University of South Florida. As noted, this Greene and Hartley edited volume on ceramic analysis focuses on those forms of analysis which investigate structural characteristics of ceramics and the methodologies that link such structural characteristics with the typological and compositional data that compose the majority of evidence in contemporary ceramic analyses. The contributions illustrate varied levels of ceramic analysis and generally make the distinction between “structural” and “compositional,” sometimes featuring both or emphasizing the structural. While featuring the treatment of structure and composition as discrete domains of analytical characterization, some authors demonstrate that the inclusion of “structural” data is indispensable to understanding of ceramic production globally across geographies, political economies, and craft traditions (Bauer Chapter 7). The contributors often call into question the treatment of structure and composition as discrete domains of analytical characterization rather than complementary analyses. The editors (Chapter 1) and Bauer (Chapter 7) emphasize that the neglect of structure-oriented approaches to ceramic analysis and recent emphasis on compositional data has left archaeologists without a full range of analytical tools to investigate the practice of pottery making. A few of the authors delve into clay preparation strategies and ceramic vessel formation techniques by means of including xeroradiography or digital X-ray fluoroscopy (Heinsch Chapter 2; Hartley, Greene, and Doumani Dupuy Chapter 5; Hegberg and Heinz Chapter 10). Multiple scales and instruments (Greene and Hartley Chapter 1), notably digital radiography (DR) and the lesser used X-ray computed tomography (XCT), are employed to evaluate textural contrasts (Heinsch Chapter 2). Petrographic data is subsequently used and supplemented by SEM-EDS, INAA, XRF, or ICP-MSR (Heinsch Chapter 2; Bauer Chapter 7; Graff Chapter 9). Other contributors focus on fabrication techniques and/or chaîne opértoire (Koons and Guedes Chapter 4; Berg Chapter 6) such as wheel-forming and coiling using the potter’s wheel and other rotary or stationary forms, or a variety of distinct forming techniques or combinations of two or more techniques and evidenced by “communities of practice” (Bauer Chapter 7). There are also examples of ceramic ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology involving clays and forming techniques (Koons and Guedes Chapter 4; Berg Chapter 6) and ethnographic observations on teaching and learning strategies (MacFarland Chapter 8) as well as determining sociocultural and socioeconomic strategies and practices (Duff Chapter 3). In sum, the authors provide varied levels and examples demonstrating that structural analyses in ceramic studies can “renew” pottery studies, and contend that the assessment is greater than the sum of their parts. It is difficult to ascertain how many of the contributions have been updated or revised given the publication delays, but examining the bibliographies provides some general indicators.1 The most recent citation entries in the “Foreword” and the eleven stand-alone chapters suggest that seven were submitted soon after the oral presentations in 2010; last entries date to 2006 (one), 2007 (two), and 2012 (four). For 2014 (two chapters), one each by Duff and Graff and 2017 and 2018 (one each), the introductory and concluding chapters by the editors. The data suggests that no or minimal alterations had been made by the contributors, whereas Greene and Hartley updated their contributions and change the volume’s title. 1I thank a long-time science book senior editor for suggesting this exercise. There are some interesting omissions that might have been corrected since much has been published about “structure” and ‘composition” during the past decade. The practice of mixing two or more clays in order to create desired fabricating material with desired plasticity or including aplastics for desired thermal properties is not considered by any of the authors. While two authors (Greene and have published articles for Alice Hunt’s edited The Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Ceramic Analysis (Oxford Handbooks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) no authors cite any of the 36 articles from this significant compendium: “10 Provenance Studies: Productions and Compositional Groups” by Yona Waksman or any from Part IV Evaluating Ceramic Provenance “15 Petrography: Optical Microscopy” Patrick Degryse and Dennis Braekmans; “17 Electron Microprobe Analysis (EMPA)” Corina Ionescu and Volker Höck; “18 Isotope Analysis” Bettina Wiegand; “19 X-Ray Powder Diffraction (XRPD)” Robert Heimann; “20 X-Ray Fluorescence-Energy Dispersive (ED-XRF) and Wavelength Dispersive (WD-XRF) Spectrometry” Mark Hall; “21 Handheld Portable Energy-Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometry (pXRF)” Elizabeth Holmqvist; “22 Particle Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) and Its Applications for Ceramic Analysis” Marcia Rizzutto and Manfredo Tabacniks; “ 23 Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) and Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS)” Mark Golitko and Laure Dussubieux; “24 Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) in the Study of Archaeological Ceramics” Leah D. Minc and Johannes Sterba; or even “25 Synchrotron Radiation” Alan F. Greene. Likewise no relevant articles are cited from the Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, 2nd ed. (Claire Smith (ed.-in-chief; Cham, Switzerland, 2018) and Encyclopedia of Geoarchaeology (Alan S. Gilbert, ed.). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2017) -- the 2022 second edition of the Encyclopedia of Geoarchaeology is of course, excluded (Alan S. Gilbert, Paul Goldberg, Rolfe D. Mandel and Vera Aldeias, eds.; Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland AG) and Eleanora A. Reber (2018) Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS): Applications in Archaeology (Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726- 1_340-2). I mention these publications because a number of the chapters in Searching for Structure in Pottery Analysis would have benefitted from updating because there had been only minimal alteration since the oral presentations a decade ago. Some might also have profited by considering Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) a method of digital documentation which consists of capturing multiple digital images (typically between 40 and 64) of a stationary object from a fixed camera position or Close-range Photogrammetry (CRP), a faster technique improving 3D Scanning for data capture, processing and generating models. Nonetheless, I am thankful to see that the presentations from the original conference have been well-edited and published and that two authors completed their dissertations while another married, a few moved to new employment, and most continue their research involving a combination of structural and compositional factors. One can certainly say that “concluding chapter provides historical and conceptual perspective on the frameworks, techniques, and sociocultural interpretation discussed in the preceding contributions. It offers an important contextualizing statement, situating ceramic analysis within the wider breadth of archaeological research and providing an understanding of what balanced structural and compositional ceramics analysis adds to the general sub-disciplinary debate. In closing the volume, it stresses what increased focus on structure brings to contemporary ceramic studies and directs future researchers to the most potentially productive research topics.” The volume is a fine achievement and the “New Directions in Anthropological Archaeology” Series Editor, Thomas E. Levy, the Editorial Board (Guillermo Algaze, Geoffrey E. Braswell, Paul S. Goldstein, Joyce Marcus, and Charles Stanish), Managing Editor Janet Joyce, and others at Equinox Publishing can take pride in making this volume available in this growing book series.