ABSTRACT
In this chapter I again provide overviews of the basic production processes for three groups of crafts. This is done to establish a basis for understanding the practice of these crafts and the role of their products and practitioners in societies. It will also allow the comparison of craft industries, as discussed in Chapter 7. In this chapter, the craft groups are all transformative; that is, the transforming of the chemical or micro-structural properties of their raw materials is an essential part of their production. Soft, pliable clay, readily dissolving in water, is transformed into hard, relatively impermeable terracotta, stoneware, or porcelain. Rocks and minerals are transformed into metals that can be shaped into almost anything by hammering or by casting, then re-melted and reshaped again. Finally, perhaps the most amazing transformation of all, opaque, everyday quartz pebbles or sand are transformed into translucent, extraordinary glass. All of the craft groups discussed here are pyrotechnologies, transforming materials with the use of fire (or more accurately, heat). Chemically transformative crafts were relatively rare in antiquity, other than dyeing, and not all dyes functioned by chemical transformation as described in the Fiber section in Chapter 3. The production of lime and
gypsum plasters and mortars, as well as cement, are excellent examples of both pyrotechnologically and chemically transformed materials (Hodges 1989 [1976]), and the two former were some of the earliest transformative technologies in the world.
