Ancient Egyptian pottery: a bane or a blessing?

The author first establishes that until recently pottery, which is one of the few commodities among the material evidence recovered from Ancient Egypt that certainly played a big part in common life, has largely been neglected as an invaluable archaeological tool. He then notices that the process of the excavator's selection for publication of precisely the intact pots, often large and thickly-walled, led to a very unrepresentative set of pottery types, in the case of cemeteries as well as of settlements. Now that matters have improved in this respect, he ponders what might be achieved in the field of Egyptian pottery studies, and how to optimize this. The little innovative artisanship of the potter demands very close observations to detect changes through successive generations. (OEB)