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Discover the hidden marvel of Cyprus: the Terracotta Army of Agia Eirini. Rivaling China's famous warriors, this extraordinary collection of over 2,000 clay figures offers a unique window into ancient Mediterranean life. Uncover the accidental discovery by a local priest, the meticulous excavation by Swedish archaeologists, and the sanctuary's evolution over 700 years.From fertility rituals to warrior cults, witness the changing beliefs of ancient Cyprus through its remarkable terracotta figures. Learn how this incredible find reshaped our understanding of ancient Mediterranean culture and continues to captivate the world today. Join us on a journey through time as we explore one...

Broken, charred and still crusted with nearly 8000-year-old food, the remnants of ancient pottery found across northern Eurasia wouldn’t be mistaken for fine china. But the advent of this durable technology—used to cook and store abundant plant and animal resources—was a huge step forward for hunter-gatherers in this part of the globe. It was also home-grown, new research suggests.For decades, researchers believed pottery arrived in Europe along with agriculture and domesticated animals, as part of a “package” of technologies that spread northward from Anatolia beginning about 9000 years ago. Pots found in Northern Europe dating around the same time were...

A vase purchased for $3.99 at a Maryland thrift store turned out to be a nearly 2,000-year-old Mayan artifact. Anna Lee Dozier of Washington, said she was shopping at the 2A Thrift Store in Clinton when her attention was grabbed by an unusual vase. "It looked old-ish, but I thought maybe 20, 30 years old and some kind of tourist reproduction thing so I brought it home," Dozier told WUSA-TV. Dozier said she was visiting Mexico on a work trip earlier this year when she noticed some items on display at the Museum of Anthropology bore a startling resemblance...

There are two reasons, according to Jim Adovasio, we don’t think of baskets or textiles when we think of the Stone Age. One is that stones and bones, being far more durable, are far more common at archeological sites than artifacts made of fiber... And yet it has been around a long time, as four small pieces of clay described by Adovasio this past year make clear. Found at a site called Pavlov in the Czech Republic, they are 27,000 years old--and impressed with patterns that could only have been created by woven fibers. These artifacts push back the date...

Potters at Maya cities on the Caribbean side of Central America fused volcanic ash with local limestone to form household and ceremonial pottery, because the ash made their ceramics easier to fire. The distinctive recipe was a hallmark of the Late Classic Period from A.D. 600 to 900, Ford said. With thousands of people living in cities such as El Pilar and Tikal, the Mayan potters burned through several tons of volcanic ash every year, Ford has estimated. But no one can figure out where the ash came from. The mystery begins with the fact that there just aren't any...

Are there any other Freeper potters? I’m a newbie of 2 years. Mostly hand building but learning the wheel. Would love to get to know other conservative potters. As you can imagine, the art is full of liberals. Ugh.

The American Museum of Ceramic Art visits Icheon, South Korea, to observe artists as they create beautiful Korean ceramics using traditional methods. Icheon has a history of ceramic culture that spans thousands of years, and it continues to this day.

Pottery fragments found in a south China cave have been confirmed to be 20,000 years old, making them the oldest known pottery in the world, archaeologists say. The findings, which will appear in the journal Science on Friday, add to recent efforts that have dated pottery piles in east Asia to more than 15,000 years ago, refuting conventional theories that the invention of pottery correlates to the period about 10,000 years ago when humans moved from being hunter-gathers to farmers. The research by a team of Chinese and American scientists also pushes the emergence of pottery back to the last...

The wreck of a Roman ship from the first century AD which is still whole and has over 500 wide-mouthed amphorae onboard has been discovered to the south of the island of Panarea... [announced] by the Regional Councillor for Cultural Heritage, Gaetano Armao, and by the Superintendent, Sebastiano Tusa. ''From the first surveys,'' said Tusa, ''we can establish that it is a merchant shipping measuring around 25 metres, in perfect condition, which transported fruit and vegetables from Sicily to the markets in the north. The style of the amphorae is in fact typical of the 'workshops' of the island and...

In the middle of Rome's trendiest neighborhood, surrounded by sushi restaurants and nightclubs with names like Rodeo Steakhouse and Love Story, sits the ancient world's biggest garbage dump--a 150-foot-tall mountain of discarded Roman amphorae, the shipping drums of the ancient world. It takes about 20 minutes to walk around Monte Testaccio, from the Latin testa and Italian cocci, both meaning "potsherd." But despite its size--almost a mile in circumference--it's easy to walk by and not really notice unless you are headed for some excellent pizza at Velavevodetto, a restaurant literally stuck into the mountain's side. Most local residents don't know...

Did North Carolina potteries use uranium oxide glazes in the pre-WWII art pottery era? For a long time many students of North Carolina art pottery have held that they did, but this author has been unable to find any verifiable example of such a glaze. There are many examples of chromium oxide red-orange glazes, of course, and the colors of these glazes can be very similar. However, chromium oxide is not radioactive -- uranium oxide is, even in a glaze -- and chromium oxide does not glow under ultraviolet light, while uranium oxide glazes often do fluoresce in the presence...

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH | A local captain and his crew have discovered a unique rock and nearby artifacts that might help reveal how the first people came to Southeastern North Carolina thousands of years ago.Geologists said the rock, called black chert or novaculite, was previously thought to only be available in vast quantities in the mountains of Arkansas. Zulu Discovery, a local underwater exploration company, found a very dense version of the rock dozens of feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean off Wrightsville Beach. Chert was used by the first people in North America, called Paleo-Indians, to create the...

The Treasure Chest of Asheville, North Carolina, and its successor firm, Three Mountaineers, Inc., was a well-known seller of "mountain pottery" from the mid-1920s through the mid-1930s. So how much of this "mountain pottery" was actually made in the mountains of North Carolina? As far as I can tell, none of it. The "Sunset Mountain" line came from J. B. Cole's Pottery in the North Carolina Piedmont. The remainder of the pottery wares seem very likely to have been made by Cornelison Pottery in central Kentucky.

The "kiln opening" is a folk pottery tradition which has been adopted by the Seagrove, NC, Celebration of Seagrove Potters as an annual area-wide event. Some 50 pottery shops are participating in this year's Celebration of Spring kiln openings during the weekend of April 17-18.

Who made "Daison Ware?" Conventional wisdom holds that the pottery sold as Daison Ware in the 1930s and 1940s was made by various of the North Carolina Cole families, but that may not be so. Certainly, J. B. Cole's Pottery was a primary source, but there is insufficient evidence to attribute other potteries with this connection. Daison Manufacturing Corporation was a manufacturer/distributor of lamps and other housewares and was located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Daison lamps were artistically-designed, quality products and occasionally turn up in estate collections. Photographs of two Daison lamps are currently available on the Smithsonian Institution's CollectionsSearchCenter. During...

(IsraelNN.com) A breakthrough in the research of the Hebrew Scriptures has shed new light on the period in which the Bible books of the Prophets were written. Professor Gershon Galil of the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa has deciphered an inscription dating from the 10th century BCE (the period of King David’s reign) and has proven the inscription to be ancient Hebrew, thus making it the earliest known example of Hebrew writing. The significance of this breakthrough relates to the fact that at least some of the Biblical scriptures are now proven to have been composed...

NOTICE: This article is G-rated; it has nothing to do with female anatomy; it concerns ceramic jugs. The utilitarian form called the "jug" -- basically, a fat bottle with a handle -- was dressed up in colorful glazes early in the North Carolina art pottery era, transforming an everyday object into a work of art.

When Jugtown Pottery kicked off the North Carolina art pottery movement in the early 1920s, its owners focused on two lines of ware: traditional lead-glazed "dirt dish" earthenware and new, colorful pieces based on oriental designs. Potters in the surrounding area observed no such strictures; whether by genius or by serendipity, they used colorful art-pottery glazes on anything that went into the kiln, pitchers included. The pitchers sold and, some nine decades later, they still sell.

The Rebecca jug is an enduringly popular form of North Carolina art pottery. The "Rebecca" got its name from illustrations of the Biblical story of Rebecca at the Well (in Genesis, Chapter 24). The classic shape of the Rebecca is that of an ewer (a vase-shaped water jug) with an elongated, over-arched handle. [Pictures]

Some 2,500 years ago, a mysterious culture emerged in Nigeria. The Nok people left behind bizarre terracotta statues -- and little else. German archaeologists are now looking for more clues to explain this obscure culture. Half a ton of pottery shards is piled on the tables in Peter Breunig's workroom on the sixth floor of the University of Frankfurt am Main. There are broken pots, other storage vessels, a clay lizard and fragments of clay faces with immense nostrils. The chipped head of a statue depicts an African man with a moustache, a fixed glare and hair piled high up...