If you’ve ever played any of the Sid Meier’s Civilization games, you may know that pottery is one of the very first “technologies” that your civilization can acquire. Humans have been practicing pottery for thousands of years, and the art of pottery is even older than farming.
You’d think that the first examples of pottery would be practical: pots, bowls, and various other things people could’ve used in daily life. But historians say that the oldest piece of pottery is one of art: The Venus of Dolní Věstonice. Archaeologists who came across the ceramic figurine in the Czech Republic date it to 29,000–25,000 BC, making it one of the oldest pieces of ancient ceramic art.
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You might think that we’re going to use the terms “ceramics” and “pottery” interchangeably here. I’m sorry to disappoint — they mean slightly different things, and here’s where experts make the distinction. The main difference is materials: in pottery, every piece is made of clay as the primary material — paint, accessories, and other things can be added later, but clay is the base.
Ceramics involve creations from materials other than clay, mostly inorganic and non-metallic. Both are processed at high temperatures (pottery in a kiln, ceramics sometimes in open-air pit firing, too). But here’s the essential difference: all pottery is ceramics, but not all ceramics are pottery. Ceramics can be made from porcelain, stoneware, or earthenware. Essentially, pottery is a subset of ceramics. So, the Venus of Dolní Věstonice statue might actually qualify as ceramics more than pottery.
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Still, long before humans became farmers, they were potters. Historians say that pottery was a necessity for survival for hunter-gatherers. Pots, bowls, and plates allowed them to cook meats and fish, ferment beverages, and store water.
Ancient pottery was a bit different from what we have now: the potters of old didn’t use glazes, made everything by hand (no pottery wheel!), fired their pots in open flames or fire pits in the ground, and decorated them with things such as ropes, bones, and shells.
As a hobby, pottery exploded in popularity just before the pandemic, around 2018. Amateur studios began popping up in the UK, Spain, and NYC. People got into pottery for different reasons: some like the aesthetics of simple living, others were looking for a hobby where you can see a physical end result of your work, and some turned to pottery as a way to decrease stress.
Pottery, in fact, is a great way to relieve stress, just like any other form of arts and crafts. Research shows that after 45 minutes of an art-making activity, 75% of people experience a significant decrease in the stress hormone cortisol. Younger people notice a stronger effect, too.
“I think one reason might be that younger people are developmentally still figuring out ways to deal with stress and challenges, while older individuals — just from having lived life and being older — might have more strategies to problem-solve and manage stress more effectively,” the co-author of the study, Girija Kaimal, EdD, explained.
