Sphakia Survey: Ceramic fabric analysis
The full description of the Sphakia Survey pottery fabric analysis programme is given in the following article:
Summary
In archaeology, pottery dates are usually based on groups of complete vessels or pieces (sherds), found together in sealed, stratified deposits on an excavation. Fine pottery, used for eating and drinking, changes most frequently; coarse pottery, used for cooking, storage, transport, and industrial production, changes at a much slower rate. Fine pottery, precisely because it changes more often, forms the basis of most pottery chronologies, and is, conventionally, studied in more detail. Coarse pottery does not usually receive as much attention from archaeologists.
Fortunately, things are changing: archaeologists have realised the value of studying both fine and coarse wares, and they have begun to apply fabric analysis to both. In the future, when researchers publish well-dated excavation deposits, their reports will almost certainly include detailed comments on fabric, as well as on shape and style. Such reports will make it possible for all archaeologists to make very detailed, and hopefully accurate, comparisons between different groups of pottery from both excavation and survey.
In the course of Sphakia Survey fieldwork, we collected pottery from three epochs: Prehistoric (PH); Graeco-Roman (GR); and Byzantine-Venetian-Turkish (BVT). To date there has been very little excavation in Sphakia, and most of the material excavated is later than Prehistoric. For GR and BVT, we have enough fine ware pottery, known and published from other sites and areas, to be able to date most of our material. But for the PH epoch, we have almost no fine ware: nearly all PH sherds are coarse.
We therefore had to find a way to date the (mostly coarse) Prehistoric pottery, and also the unassigned coarse wares belonging to the GR and BVT epochs. Fabric analysis, applied to both coarse and fine wares, has provided an analytical tool for placing our material in a testable chronological sequence, covering all three epochs.
