Experimental production of Nile clay vessels: Asparn/Zaya 2023, part 1

Together with a fantastic team of LMU students, including our student assistant Caroline and supported by our PostDoc Giulia D’Ercole and Hans Stadlmann, I spent the last weekend at Asparn (Austria), at the MAMUZ museum and had the pleasure to participate once again in the experimental archaeology class hosted by the University of Vienna (many thanks here to all of the colleagues, especially to Mathias Mehofer).

The LMU team 2023 at Asparn/Zaya (photo: H. Stadlmann).

Our team from LMU was enforced by our dear friends and colleagues Vera Albustin, Ludwig Albustin, Michaela Zavadil and Su Gütter – loads of thanks to all of them! It was not just a very productive weekend but also highly enjoyable.

Following up on our results from the last year, especially on firing pottery with animal dung, we started with producing some replicas of Egyptian and Nubian vessels on Day 1. Most importantly, we could, for the first time, work with real Nile clay. Earlier this year, Giulia had revisited the local potters at Abri (for her last visit in 2014 see the AcrossBorders blog) and they kindly gave us some clay, tempered with sheep/goat dung and ready for use. We exported this Nile clay and brought it to Asparn. This new material was strikingly different to the modern clay we normally use for our replicas! Vera struggled with the very instable paste, making the forming process a real challenge (and a mould necessary at the end). She produced a very nice open bowl and a small beaker which was later red burnished. Giulia also made a small test cup, intended to study the fracture of the vessel after firing.

Vera working on the Nile clay bowl using a mould for the rounded base/lower part.
The finishing of the surface of Vera’s bowl resulted in scraping marks which are strikingly similar to those on ancient Nile clay vessels. Giulia is getting ready to produce a small test cup.

On Day 2, we made a test firing of the small vessels produced on Day 1 – we used a circular pit as open fire and sheep and cattle dung as fuel. The results were quite impressive – just after one hour, the main firing process was done and when we opened the “kiln” after 1.5hours, there were only little damages to some clay figurines, the vessels had stay intact. Most of them were nicely fired black, indicating that this way of packing vessels into dung and leaving the kiln unopened allows a firing process in reduced atmosphere – mirroring the appearance of most Nubian style vessels from Sudan!

Our pit we used this year for firing ceramics with animal dung (and some other materials).

On Day 3, the Nile clay vessels (and our new replicas of fire dogs) were fired. We used the same pit, but made a much larger “kiln” out of sheep and cattle dung, including some straw and some bushes on the top (the latter are of course not really comparable to what would have been used in Egypt/Sudan, where also nowadays palm leaves are used).

Preparing our „kiln“ made up of animal dung (photo: C. Elkins).
We placed some small branches on top of the dung. A mix of dung and bushes is very likely for firing processes in ancient Egypt and Sudan (photo: C. Elkins).

We started the firing of this kiln from the top, and it took almost 2h until we opened it. Towards the end of the process, we created some air holes since we were aiming for a firing process in oxidised atmosphere.

Our „kiln“ towards the end of the firing process.

Well – what worked perfectly was the creation of the small, burnished beaker in Nile clay as a Black topped vessel. The surface of the larger bowl was very irregularly fired and shows many black spots, presumably because it was quite densely packed in the dung fuel. All the fire dogs came out with a very black surface, considerably different to our previous experiments firing them with wood as the only fuel.

The larger bowl in Nile clay showing very irregular colours after firing.

All in all, we again learned a lot during these three days in Asparn – not only about the challenges and details of some working steps when using Nile clay to produce ceramic vessels, but also about the qualities of dung as fuel in open fires. There are several things we would like to repeat and modify next year!

The second part of our experiments was dedicated to cooking with fire dogs – part 2 of Asparn 2023 will follow shortly.

Advances in experimental archaeology: firing pottery, use of dung and much more

Most know by now that poop is of great interest for us archaeologists. Recently, the so-called ‘archaeology of dung’ has resulted in numerous cross-geographical publications confirming the use of animal dung in archaeological deposits as the main fuel source and several other purposes. Most of these studies focus on the analysis of the microscopic evidence attributable to dung, combining multi-proxy approaches to investigate the biological components and potential markers of herbivore dung, as well identifying archaeobotanical indications from dung pellets and related sediments. Less numerous are studies concerning the identification of dung as a tempering agent in ceramic material.

In a new paper just published, Giulia D’Ercole and I aimed to replicate, observe, and discuss the recipe utilised by the ancient potters of Sai Island (northern Sudan) in the New Kingdom period using an experimental approach. We discuss the possible adoption of organic inclusions, and especially animal dung, as tempering agents to produce some of the locally made Nubian and Egyptian style ceramics. We think that the use of animal dung within the large set of pottery production offers important fresh insights into both long-standing traditions and cultural encounters (Budka and D’Ercole 2022).

One observation in this paper was also that in terms of the firing process of our samples, it must have been at a low temperature resulting in a minimal supply of oxygen, as in most cases the typical relicts left by the combustion of organic materials were still visible. Questions regarding kilns for both handmade and wheel-made vessels, as opposed to open firing techniques, need to be investigated further, as does the kind of fuel used for firing pottery. Recent research suggests that fresh wood and animal dung were used in tandem in pottery kilns (see the case of the smelting furnace from Egypt, Verly et al. 2021), and possibly even for open firing.

This brings me to our most recent experiments connected with firing pottery. I spent the last weekend at Asparn (Austria), at the MAMUZ museum and had the pleasure to participate once again in the experimental archaeology class hosted by the University of Vienna.

Vera’s great Classical Kerma replicas placed in our lower bedding of goat dung.

Together with Vera and Ludwig Albustin and other colleagues, we were busy on the first day firing high quality replicas of Classical Kerma beakers. We used goat dung as the main fuel, but also some fresh wood and the results were really good – it went fast, and the appearance of the pots is very close to the ancient ones. We will clearly continue in this line, making more experiments with mixed fuels for firing pottery, for example with adding reed or straw.

Pottery firing in progress.

The second part of our experiments this year in Asparn was dedicated to fire dogs, their possible use and cooking pots. Our current line of research aims to test the advantage of using fire dogs together with Nubian style cooking pots – they differ slightly in shape and size of the Egyptian ones. I believe it is possible that the inhabitants of Sai found some creative ways to combine Egyptian fire dogs with Nubian cooking pots – thus they might have created something new.

Our new set of fire dogs which was fired and is now ready for use.
New replicas of Nubian cooking pots placed on fire dogs.

For some canines, all this effort and attention to the curious fire dogs remains incomprehensible. The different smells at the experimental archaeological site were a lot more exciting here.  

References

Budka and D’Ercole 2022 = Budka, J. and D’Ercole, G. 2022. An Experimental Approach to Assessing the Tempering and Firing of Local Pottery Production in Nubia during the New Kingdom Period. EXARC Journal 2022/2. https://exarc.net/ark:/88735/10638

Verly et al. 2021 = Verly, G., Rademakers, F.W., Somaglino, C., Tallet, P., Delvaux, L. and Degryse, P. 2021. The chaîne opératoire of Middle Kingdom smelting batteries and the problem of fuel: excavation, experimental and analytical studies on ancient Egyptian metallurgy. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 37 (article no. 102708) DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2020.102708