PHD_Pottery_Database.accdb

<p dir="ltr">Grooved Ware has been the subject of much research over the past ninety years, providing valuable insights into a pottery tradition that extended over Britain and Ireland during the third millennium BC. Suggestions that Grooved Ware motifs may have their origins in the passage tomb tradition have been proposed previously, but it may also be that by linking the motifs employed to the tangible environment of the time that will provide a new dimension of the evidence.</p><p dir="ltr">The doctoral thesis comprises four geographically distinct areas within Britain and Ireland, deliberately selected for their geographical and environmental heterogeneity from which to construct a finely-grained understanding of the landscape to categorise Grooved Ware decorative motifs and compare them with physical landscape features. The tangible landscape features considered include rock outcrops, trees and vegetation, rivers and springs, parietal and mobiliary art and the built landscape of the Neolithic. Research into the motifs employed on Grooved Ware has drawn further attention to the specificity of the forms of decoration represented in Orkney and Wessex. The Orcadian Grooved Ware motifs appear redolent of the geological coastscape of Orkney, whilst those in Wessex appear to harness arboreal features found within the landscape composed of mosaic habitats.</p><p dir="ltr">The study took an unusual approach by recruiting many modern-day potters from the United Kingdom to identify the significant influences in their work by applying a mixed-methods research strategy. Their responses gave insight into the influences of the modern potter, thereby providing a basis for exploring the prehistoric potter’s mindset. Insights into their answers suggest there may be a presence of a second-person perspective and other sensitivities that link to the theoretical assumption applied to this research, the 21st-century philosophy of Transcendental Perspectivism and the ontological perspective of the New Animism. Various tenets, including interconnectedness, consciousness, communication and personhood, are discussed in relation to both prehistoric and modern Western potters, thereby paving the way for a new interpretation of Grooved Ware motifs</p><p><br></p>