POTTERY Use
Pots are indeed tools (Braun I983; Reid I989)
but fheY can also be signs and symbols
(Kingery I996 b: 3).Thus, the study of pottery
use requires a mix of soft- and hard-sciencc
techniques. A very profitable area of research
has been to apply a materials science-like
approach to understand the relationship be-
tween ceramic manufacture and use (Bro-
nitsky I989; Rice I996 a; I38-I48). This re-
search focuses on understanding how potters
designed their vessels to meet the perfor-
mance charactcristics associated with cook-
ing, storing water, transport, and other func-
tions related to the use of pottery as a tool.
Critics have charged (e.g., Gosselain and
Smith ı995:ı57-158), incorrectly, that this
focus on the technical attributes related to de-
sign and functional performance privileges
the utilitarian explanations for pottery dc-
sign and Change at the expense of nonutili-
rarian, symbolic, or cultural performance
characteristics. The focus on what has been
referred to as techno-function, however,
came about because of unsatisfactory expla-
nations for pottery design variability (Schif~
fer and Skibo I987). One objective of the re-