Balat III: Les Ateliers de potiers d Ayn-Asil.

• Author: London, Gloria Anne

Archaeologists rarely identify and excavate industrial areas, especially potteries, but this volume describes the recent (1983-86) excavation and analysis of a pottery workshop near the Dakhla oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt. Outside the walls of the ancient city of Ayn-Asil stand the remains of four successive ateliers dating from the end of the 6th dynasty to the First Intermediate Period.

The workshops include 24 vertical updraft kiins, pottery making tools, basins for clay preparation, wasters, and deformed pieces. In one instance the excavators identify living quarters in an atelier. No washing or levigation' basins for the clay exist since, according to the chemical analysis of the clays, the potters did not extract anything nor did they add anything to the clay other than organic material in some cases. The kilns resemble those in use today in Cyprus among traditional potters.(1) Like their ancient counterparts, the Cypriots do not add tempering materials.

Quantitative data illustrate that each atelier could produce the same pottery types. Domestic utilitarian wares predominate, especially cooking wares, basins (some with spouts), bread moulds, and pot stands. Funerary wares are absent from the repertoire.

In reconstructing one kiln and firing the wares of an Egyptian traditional potter, the team demonstrates the validity of their assessment of the pyrotechnology. Although the experiment results in a 22% loss rate, the authors note that potters today and probably in the past would achieve much greater success.

Chemical analysis X-ray flourescence) of 30 samples reveals two clay groups deriving from different geological sources thought to be locally available. A third very small group of calcareous clay (N= 22 fragments) consists of open forms with a combed wavy band on the exterior walls. The authors note that comparable forms appear in Upper Egypt, and one can also mention bowls of the same shape and surface treatment in the Levant during this period.

The workshops are those of craft...