Graham Taylor

And if the pots weren't fired properly, the residue on the surface of the pots could be lead-laden.

I was demonstrating on said stick potter's wheel at a festival at Dover Castle a few years ago when a lady snuck up behind me and decided to try and emulate me.

I'll be honest, I really can't remember.

But if you're listening, hi.

I mean, it's a scene.

I got a feeling that the pottery wasn't the main focus of that scene, really.

Nice, nice.

Basically, the earliest pottery is pretty much made from what you dig out the ground.

They're going to be pretty much contaminated with grits and rocks and bits and pieces.

That was the clay they would have used to make the pots.

Now, clay shrinks as it dries.

So as it shrinks, it pulls away from the grit a little bit and it leaves little fissures, little

gaps through the clay through which moisture can escape the pot.

So when you've got a really gritty clay and one with a lot of organic material in it, which we were talking about before, as that burns out, you're left with even more cavities.

It gets the chance for the moisture to escape.

People would have found that as they started to purify clays and make them finer and nicer and smoother to use, it became more difficult to fire them.

And if you want clay that's going to fire easily, as you would in making, for instance, amphora, because you're going to make hundreds and thousands of them and you don't want to mess about being so delicate firing them, you're going to realize that the gritty clay was actually what was helping you to get them through the firing process.

The other advantage that grog has over any other kind of grit is its expansion and contraction rate in the fired pot is going to be exactly the same as the ripot because it's made from exactly the same material.

So I think people would have sort of come to this bit by bit as a process.

You know, I was talking to an archaeologist just a couple of days ago about middens.