Glossary Pottery and vessels
Fabric
Also called: ceramic fabric
The fired clay body of a pot as seen in a fresh break: its colour, hardness, texture and the grains and particles it contains.
Archaeologists describe a pot's fabric separately from its surface. The fabric records what the potter did with the raw clay (which source was chosen, how it was cleaned, what was added) and how hot and how long the pot was fired. Two pots can look alike on the outside and still be made of quite different clays.
Fabric is often the deciding evidence for where a pot was made. Base Ring ware has a thin, hard, dark fabric that rings when struck, and a Base Ring-shaped jug found in the Levant counts as Cypriot only if its fabric matches. Drab Polished Blue Core is even named after the colour of its fabric in section.
Related terms
- Temper
Material such as sand, crushed rock, chaff or ground-up pottery that a potter mixes into clay to make it easier to shape and less likely to crack.
- Levigation
Refining clay by stirring it in water, letting the coarse particles sink and drawing off the fine clay that stays suspended.
- Ware
A class of pottery defined by a shared fabric, surface treatment and way of making, such as Red Polished or White Painted ware.
- Sherd
A broken piece of pottery; most of the pottery found on excavations and surveys is recovered as sherds.
Where it appears
- Bichrome Ware
- Bottles
- Mycenaean Imports and Local Imitations
- Pottery Kilns and Firing in Ancient Cyprus
- Red Polished Ware
- Base Ring Ware
- Bowls
- Chalcolithic Cyprus
- Drab Polished Ware
- Egypt
- Food and Diet in Ancient Cyprus
- Jars (Amphora)
and 6 more compendium pages