My first experience with archaeology during my BA was within the living history archaeological open-air museum at Historic St. Mary’s City, and my lifelong engagement with crafts brought me to experimental archaeology in 2005 for an MA in Experimental Archaeology at the University of Exeter (UK). I completed the MA with Distinction and continued to complete a PhD (Exeter, 2011) using experimental archaeology as a major component of my thesis. I have published a number of articles which address or make use of experimental archaeology and my current research at UvA is explicitly dependent on further experiments.
One of my successes has been in identifying the presence of a combination technique in Bronze Age Cretan and Cypriot potting. Rather than building pottery wheels and starting to wheel throw vessels, my research has shown that the combination technique of wheel coiling was used - potters used rotation in differing proportions to complete the construction of partially coil-built pots.
I currently hold a position in academia, where I have been working on finding new ways to best share ongoing research with the widest possible public – both in-person and digitally. I manage EXARC’s Discord server and am very happy to welcome new participants there. I have also taken a much stronger stance on widening access to research, through explicitly addressing the broader public as well as ensuring that publications and conference content are open access. I’m hoping to make collaborative progress on finding digital tools to help document, preserve, and share the work that other EXARC members do.
Keywords: ceramics, technological transfer, pottery wheel, chaîne opératoire approach, Bronze Age, Greece
Photo by: Anneke Dekker
