Our project has documented material knowledge systems from materials sourcing and clay preparation, pottery-forming techniques and firing, to marketing, use and disposal - the chaîne opératoire. We have studied differences between potters’ material knowledge in individual centres (only possible at Liješevo and Ularice) and between the centres. In addition to recording potters using the hand-wheel and bonfire-firing tradition, a single potter in the town of Gračanica, which neighbours Malešiči, was recorded - probably the last-remaining exponent of a separate tradition of pottery-making derived from an eastern, Ottoman or perhaps ultimately Byzantine tradition, which uses kick-wheels and double-chambered kilns to produce a range of pottery mirroring traditional forms. Outside the workshop setting we have recorded the relationships between potter and consumer in local markets and domestic contexts. This record is the most detailed and extensive photographic and video archive of any made with respect to this European pottery-making tradition and will complement existing ethnographic accounts (such as Popović 1956, 1957 & 1959, Kalmeta 1954, Tomić 1966) as well as wider studies which use such accounts to understand wider cultural phenomena (Bringa 1995; Lockwood 1975) and further archaeological interpretation. This project repository contains the edited project data over 4130 files.
