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Results for impressing:

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impressing

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: impressed decoration, impressed finger-tipping, impression, impressed (adj.)
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of pottery decoration produced by pressing something into the surface of the clay when still soft. Stamped decoration is a special form of this, in which a stick or bone is previously carved to give the impression its design. Intermediate in form are the impressions of natural objects like bird bones or serrated sea shells. There are a number of cultures which made the pottery with impressed designs.

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cord ornament

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Pottery decoration produced by impressing a twisted cord into the surface of the soft clay. Sometimes short individual motifs were produced by wrapping a cord around a stick (Peterborough ware), or part or the whole of a vessel was wrapped closely in cord (Corded Ware and some varieties of Beaker).

cuneiform

CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: The characteristic wedge-shaped writing of western Asia, used for over 3000 years, emerging in the 4th millennium BC in southern Mesopotamia as a system of accounting during the Uruk period. It consisted of triangular markings pressed on a clay tablet with a split reed. The word itself comes from Latin 'cuneus' meaning wedge-shaped" "wedge". The pictographic script of the Uruk period the oldest known in the world was reduced to angular forms to make it more suitable for impressing in wet clay with a split reed. The nature of the script was very like that of the Egyptians with ideographs phonograms and determinatives. The script was used for a number of languages (Sumerian Akkadian Elamite Hittite Old Persian etc.) even being adapted to serve as an alphabet at Ugarit. The first success in its decipherment was by Georg Grotefend a German philologist in 1802. In inscriptions from Persepolis he recognized the names of Darius and Xerxes and the Old Persian word for 'king'. In 1844-1847 further progress came through the recording and study of Darius's rock inscriptions at Behistun by Henry Rawlinson. He was able to translate the Old Persian version; Westergaard in 1854 tackled the Elamite text and Rawlinson with others cracked the Babylonian in 1857. This was much the most important of the three as it led directly back through the many cuneiform inscriptions at that time coming to light to the first written records those of ancient Sumer. Cuneiform texts have been found in Egypt at el-'Amarna and on various objects of the Persian Period. In the Near East cuneiform tablets from Egypt have been found at Bogazkoy in Anatolia and Kamid el-Loz in Syria. A consonantal alphabet developed at Ugarit which vanished with the town at beginning of 12th c BC; and syllabary script was used solely by Achaemenid Persians to transcribe their language from 6th-4th c BC."

Ebbsfleet ware

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Peterborough ware
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A family of elaborately decorated Neolithic ceramics found in southern and eastern parts of the British Isles. Dating to the period 3000 to 2000 BC, Isobel Smith divided Peterborough wares into three successive styles-Ebbsfleet, Mortlake, and Fengate-on the basis of their occurrence in the ditch fills at Windmill Hill. It is now recognized that these three groups overlap rather more than originally thought, and that they are best seen as part of the broad group of impressed wares found over much of northern Europe in the 3rd millennium BC. The decoration on Peterborough ware consists of pits, ?maggot impressions' made by impressing tightly rolled cord, and the impressions made by pressing the ends of bird bones into the soft clay before firing. Some of the later vessels are the first in Britain to be made with flat bases.

Fengate ware

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Peterborough ware
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A family of elaborately decorated Neolithic ceramics found in southern and eastern parts of the British Isles. Dating to the period 3000 to 2000 BC, Isobel Smith divided Peterborough wares into three successive styles-Ebbsfleet, Mortlake, and Fengate-on the basis of their occurrence in the ditch fills at Windmill Hill. It is now recognized that these three groups overlap rather more than originally thought, and that they are best seen as part of the broad group of impressed wares found over much of northern Europe in the 3rd millennium BC. The decoration on Peterborough ware consists of pits, ?maggot impressions' made by impressing tightly rolled cord, and the impressions made by pressing the ends of bird bones into the soft clay before firing. Some of the later vessels are the first in Britain to be made with flat bases.

finishing technique

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A method for altering the surface characteristics of vessels by displacing or impressing surface material or applying or removing material.

incrusting

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Impressing of material into the surface of a ceramic object.

Mortlake ware

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Peterborough ware
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A family of elaborately decorated Neolithic ceramics found in southern and eastern parts of the British Isles. Dating to the period 3000 to 2000 BC, Isobel Smith divided Peterborough wares into three successive styles-Ebbsfleet, Mortlake, and Fengate-on the basis of their occurrence in the ditch fills at Windmill Hill. It is now recognized that these three groups overlap rather more than originally thought, and that they are best seen as part of the broad group of impressed wares found over much of northern Europe in the 3rd millennium BC. The decoration on Peterborough ware consists of pits, ?maggot impressions' made by impressing tightly rolled cord, and the impressions made by pressing the ends of bird bones into the soft clay before firing. Some of the later vessels are the first in Britain to be made with flat bases.

Peterborough Ware

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A poorly made, elaborately decorated pottery of the British Late Neolithic, found in southern England. The ornament consists of pits, bone, and wooden stick impressions and 'maggot' patterns made by impressing a bit of whipped cord into the soft clay. The earliest (Ebbsfleet) substyle developed from Grimston-Lyles Hill ware c 3500 BC and consisted of round-based vessels with fairly restrained ornament. The later variants have more complicated decoration and show the influence of Beaker pottery: the second (Mortlake) substyle still occurs on round-based vessels, but in the final (Fengate) substyle the pots are flat-bottomed and have many features which lead on to the collared urns of the Bronze Age. These vessels were probably intended for everyday domestic use.

punctate decoration

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Impressing pottery repeatedly with the end of a stick, bone, quill, cane, or other narrow tool.

seal

CATEGORY: artifact; language
DEFINITION: A device for impressing characteristic marks into a soft surface, such as wet clay or wax, to indicate ownership or authenticity. Seals were made of bone, ivory, stone, or wood and had an intaglio design and were in the form of stamps or cylinder seals. The first can have a very wide range of shapes, and gives single impressions. The second, characteristic of ancient Mesopotamia, is rolled across the surface to yield a frieze of repeat designs. Their social and linguistic significance is great. They were fundamental in the development of writing system and were a status symbol of authority and sometimes accorded talismanic properties. The use of seals and writing on clay tablets appeared together in Mesopotamia, towards end of 4th millennium BC.

stamped decoration

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: stamping
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A technique of ornamentation on the soft clay of a pot by repeatedly impressing a simple design previously carved on a bone or wooden tool. Figured stamps were also used. Also refers to using an implement or paddle to impress designs on a ceramic surface.

stylus

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: stilus; plural styli, styluses
CATEGORY: artifact; language
DEFINITION: Pointed writing instrument made from a variety of materials: reed stem, bone, ivory, or metal (iron, bronze, silver). The sharpened implement is shaped like a pen with a wedge-shaped tip and one end flattened like a spatula; the latter served either to spread the wax on a writing tablet or to erase by smoothing. The stylus was used in ancient times as a tool for writing on parchment or papyrus. The early Greeks incised letters on wax-covered boxwood tablets using a stylus. A stylus was also used for impressing cuneiform writing into wet clay tablets, which were then baked.