Moving Forward

Here we are, at the end of the semester - I can hardly believe it's actually here! In looking back over the work I've done in this class, there are a few things that stand out to me; I thought, in way of closing, I'd mention them here.

First of all, it's hard to tell when you're inexperienced and optimistic exactly how much work something is going to be! All of these projects surprised me with intricacies and questions I hadn't foreseen. In a way, that made each one more meaningful and even more fun than I had really expected coming into the class. Even though few of them turned out especially pretty or even useful, I find I'm proud of what I was able to accomplish nonetheless.

The second thing I find interesting as I read through my posts one more time is just how much was contributed by others. Even though I often felt a little out of place, struggling with my misshapen coiled pots while awesome artists around me brought dragons and bowls and mugs to life with the very same clay I was using, I definitely did not make my projects what they are alone. From Kay's help with whistles (and pretty much everything else as well!) to my coworker pointing me in the direction of new cool discoveries to consider, people have been contributing to these projects all along. Of course, that's how it should be - somehow in originally envisioning this semester's work, though, I had forgotten about that integral part of learning.

Lastly and perhaps most importantly, to me at least, everything I encountered this semester gave me proof. Proof of something that maybe I had suspected before, but not yet seen in action: proof that the outcome of the project does not have to be perfect in order to inspire thought and create connections. Nothing I worked on was an exact replica or a precisely accurate procedure, and yet still everything served its original purpose - to expand my frame of mind and give me grounds on which I could approach ancient artifacts and people with even just a little bit more understanding and admiration - exquisitely.That's a lesson I will definitely take forward with me as I begin focusing my education on archaeology and communicating archaeology to the public, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to have learned it.

The Process of Color

I have to begin this post with a little bit of celebration: everything survived firing!!

I continue this post with a lot of indecision. The range of colors and coloring techniques available to me when I sat down to glaze my pieces managed to slow my progress considerably, as I struggled to evaluate each choice.

Color in history actually came up last week at work, in a conversation with some volunteers about the use of color on sarcophagi and portraits in the Mummies of the World travelling exhibit. Our conversation was mostly about the limitations that artists thousands of years ago faced, the scarcity of some colors over others, the resulting style choices; but I must admit that whenever I walk through that exhibit, what strikes me most is not which colors are absent, but all the colors that are still present after all sorts of time and, in some cases, abuse. Color, as I demonstrated perfectly in my anxious indecision today, is most definitely a part of the high standards and capacity for representation and meaning in art. Color, like building technique, can be a clue to the thoughts and perceptions of the artist.

But another interesting thing about color is that it can be highly personal, as my choices were today (especially given that I did not have the color templates or sources to match those that went along with the originals my projects were modeled after), or it can be culturally mandated - by fashion, by religion, by power, etc. Examples of both personal and cultural color are common, in ancient pieces as well as in pieces today. To me, this is an interesting distinction to consider as we investigate and try to understand ancient art - are we connecting with, or evaluating, or admiring, the culture as a whole or the individual artist? Though there is a significant difference between the two, I believe both definitely have worth.

Something from the Other Side of the World

New Discovery - "Church Model"

The above article was sent to me by one of my coworkers, who somehow figured out that I'm kind of into that sort of thing ;~) At first I read through it, was suitably impressed, and went on with my day. But I never did quite shake that image of the little hollow building, all ready to be lit up - and when I had extra time today after getting the rest of my whistles ready to go, I found the decision had already been made. 

In the interest of time, I used the pottery studio's roller to flatten myself some clay; without knowledge of the specific tools used to make the little church model, I was more interested in actually forming the building and the windows than the particulars of setting up the project. Along the same line, I decided early on that my building, while built after the model of the newly discovered church model, would not necessarily be a church. This goes back to my thoughts about representation in pottery: obviously, the church meant a lot to whoever made the original model, and that meaning spurred them to take the time to tackle such a project and imbue it with such delicate detail. I chose to honor that personal meaning rather than the actual object itself, and made my little lantern house with a more nature-oriented theme, as that's what holds similar meaning for me. 

To be honest, I'm glad I did, because - as with all my projects so far - making the little house turned out to be more difficult than expected. Getting reasonably straight and steady walls presented an interesting challenge, but even more so did the decorations in the windows. That said, this project held an element of satisfaction that my other projects have only danced around, stemming precisely from the idea of representation. Its utilitarian purpose (to give light) added to rather than detracted from its personal purpose. I actually found myself surprised that this sort of project is not more common today in hand-building classes. We still tend to think (I say "still" because this thinking has been in place since the beginning of the nineteenth century and earlier) of civilization and technology developing in a linear fashion, each thing better than the next, each thing helping the struggle for one particular goal. While that sort of thinking has its benefits, it leaves little place or understanding for excellent, inspiring projects from the past - like the Peruvian whistling vessels, or the church model - that stand out in terms of skill and meaning, but don't serve to advance anything in particular. To me, that seems like quite a pity.

I chose to go with stars and a forested roof - constellations, I'm afraid, were a bit beyond me this time around, especially as I didn't have time to address the holes in the roof of the original. Definitely still have some things to learn about constructing these models! I'm curious about the window decorations: it would have taken quite a fine tool to cut them out of the clay, if that's how they were done (I used a needle, which was effective, but it did tend to warp the walls of the house a bit). For my side windows, I tried cutting out a hole and then adding clay back in to make a window-pane effect, and that also worked, though I imagine the addition is pretty obvious on the inside of the house - I couldn't quite reach in well enough to smooth it over on that side. The holes cut in the original do not seem to adhere to strict lines, so it seems that perhaps the idea was more important than the execution? -Of course it could also be a product of what tools were used!

Old and New

Today my whistling vessel finally came together!!!

"Came together" there is a very accurate operative phrase. Welding my chosen whistle body, the by-now-dried main chamber, and a clay headpiece and handle together took some patience. I imagine most original potters (and most potters in general) did their work in one go as much as possible, but my schedule and the learning process here complicated things for me a little bit. It took a fair amount of coaxing to get the old dried clay to join properly with newer, wetter clay - in the end, though, I think I had success. Next, we'll see if it survives firing!

I have to admit, I'm pretty tempted to take this opportunity to go into an extended metaphor about melding current culture with the past, reshaping and recovering what we know and feel about ancient civilizations until they become more amenable to assimilation in the present. Something along that line definitely occurred to me often as I worked on my vessel today - though that could be blamed on the fact that I've been over my head in research and writing for my history-of-archaeology-in-popular-culture thesis for what feels like forever now. Suffice it to say that it seems to me that often, the things that we perceive as unyielding and unchangeable - dried, solid clay, for example - end up actually quite malleable, changing here and there until they can be brought into the next stage of development required of them.

See- you can hardly tell where the seams are! :~) That hollow handle was awfully tricky, though. I tried to do it by wrapping a flat rectangle of clay into a tube, but given the bend in the handle this quickly became complicated. I kept thinking of using a mold, but the question of how to remove the mold without disturbing the clay perplexed me. Perhaps molding it then letting it dry - or just using slightly drier clay - would have helped? Mine was quite soft - as a result, now it'll need some sanding to help with those lumps . . .

Tinkering

As promised, today I sat down and really focused on getting those whistles to work. It's hard to imagine such small objects taking so long to form and complete, but as it turns out there is a seemingly infinite array of minute adjustments and combinations of adjustments that can be made to get a whistle to work - or slip farther and farther from making a clear sound, as was the case with one or two of my little would-be instruments.

And what precisely was it, that needed to be done? Well, all of my whistles needed sharper edges for the air to flow over. When I had originally made the whistles, I had chosen to use just my hands, thinking "Of course the ancient Peruvians didn't have popsicle sticks!" This was silly of me, though, because I quickly realized that in order to get the straight edges and well-formed holes that make a whistle work, they probably did use some sort of tool. I'm not sure what that was, but something popsicle stick-like definitely has its appeal. I ended up using one of the needles common in the pottery studio, as well as a wooden scraping stick. Funny how we identify tools - seems to me we're only really likely to understand something as a tool if we've had occasion to use it or something very like it before.

One two of my whistles I chose to attach mouth pieces, though they all eventually worked - or sort-of worked - without them. The mouthpieces definitely complicated things; with those, I had to worry about how big all the openings were, how clear the air passageway was, where it was aiming, etc. Two turned out to be more than enough to occupy my time! Most of the whistle-building sites (see below) suggest making the mouth piece and whistle at once, which definitely makes sense. However, I had no way of knowing at the beginning which whistle (or how many) I'd want for my whistling vessel(s). By now, though, things are definitely starting to take shape!

How to Make a Ceramic Whistle

This was a whistle I made by splicing together two halves of a sphere. You can see the dividing line pretty clearly! However, this did not seem to affect the sound coming out of the whistle.

For this whistle, I tried to avoid the halves approach by molding the body around my thumb a bit and pulling it closed after. While the inside is smoother on the whole, it does have that ugly notch on it, and the sides are pretty irregular. Personally, I'd favor the other approach.

A top-down view of one of my whistle+mouth piece creations . . . The result of a lot of small adjustments!

Well, I Guess That Was a Good Thing . . .

I came in today to two important things - one a surprise, and one not. I had rather suspected as I left last time that the bottom of the vessel I'd been working on would be difficult to continue work on today, and to be honest I had almost expected to find that, in drying, the clay had collapsed in some areas, rendering the start a good learning exercise but definitely not a final product. More relieved that disappointed, I sat down to make another vessel body, this time intent on finishing the main chamber instead of leaving it open.

As I worked, the real surprise came: Kay gave me a folderful of information about making clay whistles, complete with troubleshooting info. (Maybe my endless and mostly futile attempts to produce sound last week had been louder - or more annoying - than I had thought? ;~D Haha, probably not, but the information definitely came at a good time.) This was an excellent help to me, and something that hadn't particularly occurred to me to look for in my research, silly as that sounds. After all, whistle technology probably hasn't changed much over years and cultures (though if it has that'd be very interesting). And I doubt that pottery was ever necessarily an entirely individual process, given the widespread use of common cultural patterns and forms.

All told, I ended the day well with a respectable vessel, coiled up to a rounded top with two openings. The coiling was an assumption on my part, and also a reflection of my limitations - I really wasn't sure how else it'd be made, and couldn't find such a thing mentioned in any of my books. I guess it's another one of those questions that comes up during "experimenting" that didn't seem so important before, yet reveals how much we see past products and processes through the lens of what we know in the present. In any case, I am now armed with new information and ready to make some working whistles the next time around.

Craftsmanship

I spent most of my time in the pottery studio today in complete wonder - at times bordering on desperate bewilderment - at the things that humanity has discovered the ability to make. More importantly, the process of turning that one-time possibility into a consistent skill impressed me.

Because, if there's one thing I can be pretty sure of after today, it's that even just making whistles (let alone whistling vessels) took a lot of tinkering for the first groups of people. And I wonder how they got the idea to begin, because it seems to me that hollow spheres with holes just so and air ducts perfectly cleared weren't really being made for many other purposes, which makes it difficult to believe the idea of a whistle arose by mistake. Perhaps experience with certain shells prompted the idea? Of course, I'm merely speculating, and a bit wildly at that; but I wish I could know what precisely was going through the minds of the first people to make these awesome vessels. That process of innovation is so human, and yet so often inscrutable in hindsight.

I may have mentioned this with the Jomon pots, but the amount of effort and perfectionism that must have gone into some of these ancient creations is crazy. I began trying to make the body of my whistling vessel today, seeing what it would be like to coil it, but also trying to make it as presentable as possible . . . And it was tough. Every once in a while (perhaps increasingly so that farther I got into the project!) a little part of me would mention, "You know, the vessel will still hold water, even if its sides aren't smooth . . ." The same thing would happen as I tried to get my now-solid whistles to sound: "Well, that was pretty close to a note - you could hear that from across the room - so what if it's a little airy?"  The standards of the pots we've found, however, are much higher than these; that, or with rose-tinted glasses, we perceive it to be so. I wonder if there was a lot of experimentation and "good-enough" pottery, that perhaps we haven't been as likely to find, or that was more likely to be broken? Or perhaps pottery was important enough that everything truly did have to be perfect in order to find use. Whatever the reason, I remain very impressed by what those long before me have accomplished - on the whole, they were far more skilled than I.

Science and Ancient Pottery!

So, after a slight detour last time, today I got back on track with some research and decision-making. I decided, first of all, to make my next project a Peruvian whistling vessel.

These are pretty much exactly what they sound like (hee hee) - they are awesome. They were made by many different ancient civilizations in South America, and vary according to culture (see article listed below). Like stirrup vessels (the project I originally considered making) the vessels often have an arched, hollow handle at the top, which can be blown into; the air then moves through the main chamber of the vessel and out the spout, going across the opening of a whistle implanted in the vessel as it does so. -That's the idea, in any case! The article below outlines some tests performed on the vessels to relate tone produced to area of origin. Scans have also been done of these vessels to peer into how they work without actually breaking them apart - unfortunately, those pictures seem to exist only in books about the history of pottery, rather than online, or I would have included one.

To make this work, I realized quickly, I would need to be able to make working whistles. So, for two hours, I experimented. I tried out different ways to make the hollow sphere of the whistle - molding it over my thumb, for example, or the currently accepted method of making two halves and smooshing them together - and I tried out five different sizes of whistle, from walnut-size to just larger than a golf ball. I even picked a mid-range size and made a few extra, some with thick walls, some with thin, to see if that affected the sound produced. This was by no means exact science; but, I figured, the point of these projects is more the curiosity and the discovery than the exactness, per se. Results of this experiment will come in another post; when the whistles have dried out a bit, I plan to chop some of them in half (for curiosity's sake), as well as compare the sounds each size/variety makes once they are more solid. Stay tuned. :~)

Whistling vessels - research into cultural variance

Something Relevant (Perhaps)

After finishing my first set of pots - well, my first two true pots, and my first multitude of misshapen attempts - I had to admit to myself that, for all my ideas, I wasn't really sure where to go next. Did I want to model a few figurines from early Europe? Or maybe one from the Nazca culture? Or maybe, I ought to build myself a  foot-driven pottery wheel and try something from early Egypt . . .

Ah, the possibilities (some more likely than others). What, then, did I end up doing? Well, naturally, I went for creating a small dish with a pair of dolphins arched down to it on one side, exploring.

Admittedly, this had nothing to do with ancient pottery. Not on the surface, at least. This particular project represents simply the result of me throwing in some headphones, sitting down in front of some clay, and letting my hands do pretty much whatever occurred to them. But - call it passion, or obsession, or just plain weirdness - my thoughts did still trend, often, to potters and artists living thousands of years ago.

As I coerced the clay into forming fins and flippers, I thought about the effort required to make sediment and water look like a particular animal or figure. It's a rewarding process, definitely, especially when you're working with something as simple and streamlined as my little dolphins. But it also demands a lot of attention - and a lot of familiarity with what you're trying to represent. Questions come up that a casual observer of animals wouldn't think to ask - like, exactly how far along down the back is the dorsal fin of a dolphin? One quarter, two thirds, one half maybe? And precisely how deep do I make the median notch between these flukes? Some of these things inevitably end up decided by aesthetics rather than anatomical correctness, in my case today as well as, I imagine, in ancient figurines.

Even so, the fact remains that it's harder than I'd expected to make a truly realistic representation of something. There had, from time to time, been part of me that looked at slightly abstracted ancient art and wondered, "Why not make the darn thing look the way it really looked? I mean, they must have seen birds like that every day, right? That's a lot of opportunity to study." The assumption was that, given enough time and patience, anything lifelike could be created. However, especially in working with clay, an unlimited of time is not given to the artist; eventually, things begin drying out. And while things are wet, often one part of the piece will misbehave while you're trying to fix another part entirely. My final realization came down to this: anything that ancient potters took the time to shape by hand, to make instantly recognizable, must have been something important to themselves or to their culture. After all, why did I sit down and make a pair of dolphins, and struggle so to make them as perfect as I could? Not only because they're some of my favorite creatures, but because they hold a lot of meaning for me. Often I think people look at ancient artifacts and get lost in thinking about technology, resources, or high trends in art. We tend to forget that these things also may have held very personal meanings to those who made them; but in thinking about those meanings, we can establish deeper connections with the objects, and possibly with the shadows of the artists behind them.

Same as Last Time, but Different . . .

Well, I guess I just wasn't quite ready to leave the early Jomon yet. When I got to the pottery studio today, my mind remained stuck on round- and pointed-bottomed pots. I had made one of the two, and it turned out decently . . . But what about the other? After all, of the two types, the cone shape is less familiar to me; maybe I had been taking the easy way out by avoiding it.

So, I sat down and tried to figure out how to make a vessel with a pointed base. As it turned out, I had little trouble coiling a cone-shape at first - in fact, it seemed easier to me that trying to make a flattish base and then building up from there.

The main problem came as the pot grew. I hesitated to rest my pot on the table without first turning it upside down, because I didn't want it to fall over sideways. But for me, adding coils to the walls is generally a two-handed process, so I struggled to hold the pot up with one hand and blend with the other. From my research I have gathered that some archaeologists believe that the pointed pots were basically dug into the dirt/ashes of a cooking fire, which heated them and kept them stable. Perhaps they were built also partially submerged in dirt or sand? -My only other strong guess is that the original Jomon potters were just that much better than me, and could blend coils easily with one hand. :~) This gets back to tool use as well - perhaps they had a tool that made it easier to blend, or a partial stand/mold of some kind.

It must be admitted that I ran into one other problem with my new pot: the walls, predictably, were soon too stretched for their own good. Because my time at the pottery studio was winding down and, well, because I was curious, I did something that seemed a little like breaking the rules: in sewing terms, I put darts into the walls of the pot. In a few places roughly equidistant around the rim, I folded the extra material into itself and smoothed it together so that I ended up with a smaller circumference. Since I know that it is dangerous to fire a pot with uneven walls, I did my very best to work out all the traces of the deed (perhaps a little bit of guilt helped in that too?).

When I was done, I reassured myself with the thought that not everyone making pots during the early Jomon period was an expert - if you think about it, some of them at least must have been making it up as they went along, at the beginning. So maybe it's not so unlikely that I am the only person ever to get a little crafty, or a little impatient, with my clay vessel . . . And along that line, maybe soon I'll be joining the ranks of those whose pots did not survive the firing process.

Something Worth Keeping, at Last

Yes indeed, today I am one unfired coiled pot the richer. It doesn't sound like much - but it definitely feels very good!

As I mentioned at the start of the semester, making a pot this way takes a lot of concentrated work. At the end of a solid two hours (and building upon my experience of the past few weeks) I had a pot only six or so inches high, and wide enough for my small fist to turn within it. To make a similarly-sized pot on a modern wheel would take me half the time most likely, and look better to boot; though in each case, it must be taken into account that I am quite a novice. It would be interesting to consider the time investment on such a project for a potter experienced in both methods - I have a feeling it could reflect on the way human attitudes towards time and material products change.

As a side note to this story of some success - I tried an alternate method as well today which ended up a definite failure. "All this time I have been building the pot from the bottom up," I thought to myself; "yet I have been tempted to turn it upside down quite often, to work on the lower edges, and my upper rim usually ends up very sloppy. What if I built the pot from the top down instead?"

It turns out that what happens when I build a pot by starting with the rim on the table and building up/in from there is complete confusion. Pretty soon I had resorted to flipping the thing over multiple times, smoothing the coils in everywhich direction, and giving up hope entirely of ever fitting an evenly domed base. The experiment still did me well, however, because it made me more confident in my original method. If I do not question my assumptions, even basic ones about which way to start something "makes the most sense," then what I can learn from these exercises would be very limited.

While my product isn't exactly impressive and most certainly will never end up in a textbook like those I am emulating, I can't help but feel proud of it. Not proud in the material sense (to be honest I've rather hidden it from everyone else at the pottery studio!) but proud in a more spiritual sense. While it's true I'm just puttering, and really have no clue what I'm doing, I still made a pot, still had fun, still learned something - and in my own way, felt that connection with the past that was the goal of this project all along.

Round Two: The Pot Thickens

My second attempt at making a coiled pot ended up the same as the first: in bits and pieces at the end of the day. The process of getting there, however, taught me a few new things . . .

-First of all, I came to class having done my research, and armed with a bunch of modern-day advice on how to make a coiled pot - things like which way to smooth the coils, how thick to make them, etc. While this new knowledge made me feel a bit more confident coming in to my second attempt, as I began to work with the clay once more it almost instantly faded from my mind. (Too busy thinking about ancient people to remember the current ones I suppose - perhaps one of the more therapeutic aspects of this project. :~D)

-That said, I did indeed make my coils thicker and it helped considerably in blending things together. The one downside to this was that I quickly became blend-happy and in no time the walls of my pot had expanded, going from a compact fist-sized base to a floppy, listing mess in only a few distressed inches. Lesson for the day: moderation!

-I also experimented with the base of my pot. Instead of making the base by coiling a spiral until it looked big enough, I tried making a circular slab first and then welding the upright coils to its edges. There were several issues with this: first of all, I am worse at making a circular slab than I am at making a circular spiral, especially without the use of a modern press; second, the pounded-down slab dried out considerably as I prepared a coil for the walls and put up quite a fight when it came time to put everything together. 

-So far I have been working really only with my hands and water, on the basis that industrially-formed metal scrapers and needles probably weren't very common during the Jomon period. But I wonder what tools they did use? After last time, I'm fairly certain anyone making a coiled piece (and expecting its walls to be somewhat regular) would need to have a reasonably flat surface for rolling - and those don't occur very often in nature. And what about scoring? What about flattening? What about making sure the pot has a uniform shape? Often I found it helped me to turn my work-in-progress completely upside down to smooth things out. However, this resulted in sub-par (if relatively smooth) work and I wonder if the first people building these pots were tempted to do the same, made the same mistake, then found a better way, perhaps using a mold or stand or . . . ?

After struggling with the thickness of the walls of my pot, I've become very interested in what firing the clay will do - if it will have a sort of evening effect (given that I get the walls regular enough to hold together in the first place) or if it will do the reverse and highlight any irregularities. It looks like the answer to that question, however, will not be coming for some time . . . 

Ancient Beginnings

So, I just finished my second class period of Independent Studies in Clay, and my first attempt at making something this semester. The past week or so has been a lesson in the difficulties of research and the importance of tools and materials. In envisioning this course, I had expected somehow to jump into recreating all sorts of cool ancient pottery: but then, I was reminded of technical issues like local clay-based techniques and old technology I haven't got access to, like hand-operated wheels.

Despite these issues, I have plowed on - with a slight attitude adjustment. My goal in the coming weeks is to do my best to replicate some ancient pottery techniques from across the world, not for some grand or important experiment, but to gain an appreciation for ancient knowledge and for those who try to understand or use it. Plus it just sounds super fun :~)

And boy, was today ever a success! I'll have to bring my camera on future days to document some of the steps - and some of the issues. I've decided to begin the semester with a small pot styled after the early Jomon period in Japan, which is one of the oldest pottery traditions yet found in the world. This means the pot will be of low-fire clay, round-bottomed, made using a coil technique, and eventually decorated with raised bands and/or rope implants.

I say "will be" because, well, my efforts today ended up in the scrap bin. But I'm okay with that, because I had a truly awesome time wrestling with the clay and encountering questions. I've never made a coiled pot before, and as my reference book says, few specifics have been published about Jomon technique. After lots of trial, error, and laughing at myself, I emerged from the pottery studio with a few main thoughts in mind:

-Coiling and blending the bottom of the pot seems to give a pretty solid base, though not necessarily a circular one! I'm sure a more experienced artist than I could do better; however, for interests' sake I might try to look up other methods. With reasonably wet clay, though, I found I could create a bottom that was cohesive enough to show no evidence of the individual coils when I sliced it apart "just to see."

-At first reading that the pots were rounded on the bottom made me raise an eyebrow: "wouldn't that be harder than making a flat bottom?" I thought. The answer is no. After an hour of melding my walls to the bottom of my pot in increasingly desperate ways, I found I did indeed have a rounded edge to the bottom of my pot. Perhaps early Jomon potters were dealing with the same issues and decided to make do?

-My library book on pottery traditions mentioned particularly the thin walls on early Jomon pots. So I figured my coils better be thin as well. Wrong again! The process of blending the coils together naturally thinned out my already-skinny coils. Next time I will use thicker coils and see if that makes it easier. The difficulty smoothing things together may also be a product of my clay/my extended handling of the clay.

-The process of making a pot this way is long. Part of that emphasis is my modern bias talking. Still, though, I wonder how many pots an individual would really have made, especially in a non-agricultural society. The process also would really be helped along by a good flat rock surface and perhaps some rock scrapers, as well as a source of water ready at hand. Tough stuff to identify at a site, I'm sure, but it'd be interesting to know if those ever turn up.

Mostly, as mentioned before, I emerged from class today filled with exciting (to me, at least!) questions. Since I've been watching old Psych lately, I began fantasizing about being an archaeological "psychic," making connections based on knowledge of ancient methods and materials rather than on facial clues and drug trivia. Yeah, yeah, pretty silly I know :~) But by exploring ancient methods of making things, I feel like we can get just one step closer to peeking, however briefly, into ancient peoples' minds.