ABSTRACT
Following the laying out of the problems in stoneware chronology in the previous chapter, a project was mounted to investigate the nature of stoneware in protohistoric Korea and Japan, the latter of which received stoneware technology from Korea in the 5th century. Scientific analysis of mullite formation in a sampling of stoneware and high-fired earthenware demonstrated that true stoneware was rare in the protohistoric periods. The adoption of the new definition of stoneware (as the presence of mullite) illustrates how ambiguous current archaeological and art historical attributions to ceramic ware categories are.
