Mobility and Pottery Production, what for? Introductory remarks

Heitz, Caroline; Stapfer, Regine (2017). Mobility and Pottery Production, what for? Introductory remarks. In: Heitz, Caroline; Stapfer, Regine (eds.) Mobility and Pottery Production: Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives (pp. 11-38). Leiden: Sidestone Press

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This edited volume deals with the mobility of humans, materials and things. Pottery studies of ancient Europe and contemporary Africa are taken as examples to illustrate how pottery vessels were made in different ways. Whether they were used, sold, given away or passed on over generations, they participated in human practices and mobilities, ranging from everyday life to single long-term migration events. By studying the making and the mobility of pots, potters, pottery mongers and pottery users, the focus shifts from ideas of one-sided notions of stable ‘cultures’ to ideas of appropriations, transformations and thus the negotiation of cultural forms.
In the book’s first section, the relationship between anthropology and archaeology is illuminated and the disciplines’ different takes on ‘culture’, ‘practice’, ‘mobility’ and ‘things’ throughout major paradigmatic shifts are addressed. The second section unites empirical, object-centred archaeological case studies in which the examination of materials and pottery styles reveals that notions of fixed cultural entities are empirically untenable. The contributions in the third part argue from more actor-centred or symmetrical
perspectives. It can be shown how humans and things are intertwined through
practices and various rhythms of movement and mobility. Thus, they offer alternative ways to approach the (re)production, negotiation and transformation of cultural practices and their material forms.

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