Pottery in Archaeology: Craft Specialisation and Standardisation of Production

Introduction In discussing craft specialisation, we are looking for evidence for the organisation of the production of pottery in a social context and for ways in which this may have changed over time. A model or typology for the organisation of production is provided by van der Leeuw (1977), in the form of five stages (or ‘modes of production’) of increasing scale and intensity: household production, individual industry, household industry, village industry and large-scale industry. This is modified by Peacock (1982) for the study of Roman pottery, by the addition of a second dimension, representing the degree of official or elite participation, in the form of military/official production and estate production. Costin (1991, 8−9), followed by Costin and Hagstrum (1995, 620), develop this second dimension further by the idea of ‘attached’ and ‘independent’ types of specialists, each of which could operate at a range of scales. She also uses the concept of the degree of specialisation (the ratio of producers to consumers), and four aspects which can be used to characterise production – context, concentration, scale or constitution and intensity. These are important in breaking the link between scale and intensity of production, a model which has been criticised by others (e.g. Feinman 1999, who challenged the original model as too ‘monolithic’ by giving examples of high-intensity craft production at a domestic scale [96]).