ABSTRACT
The title of this first chapter is taken from an article by Moses Finley entitled ‘Technical innovation and economic progress in the ancient world’ (1965: 41; 1983: 190). The whole sentence reads ‘We are too often victims of that great curse of archaeology, the indestructibility of pots.’ More recently, pottery has been dubbed an ‘archaeological “black hole”’ (Orton, Tyers and Vince 1993: 3). The pots may shatter, but the pieces remain, accidental survivors of the whole. This is certainly true in the case of Greek pottery – excavation tables and museum shelves attest to its truth.
