• January 10, 2026 | 11:30 AM - 1:30 PM
• Continental 7, Ballroom Level

8F: Sherds of Time: The Second Life of Broken Attic Ceramics (Colloquium)

Join Zoom here:

https://etsu.zoom.us/j/86716310916?pwd=Ev3r82FdKZlMbg9n2s22RE11tT8w20.1

Organizers:
Michael Anthony Fowler, East Tennessee State University, and Astrid Lindenlauf, Bryn Mawr College

Discussants:
Susan I. Rotroff, Washington University in St. Louis

Overview Statement:
Ceramic vases tend to break. If a damaged vase is not considered unsalvageable, it may be mended for the same purpose (reuse) or modified for a different function or use (reutilization). The latter may involve intentional breakage (chipping, fragmentation, or “killing”), as when potsherds are repurposed as gaming pieces or deposited throughout tombs. A damaged vessel (or potsherds) may also be broken down completely to reclaim the material (recycling). While these processes and practices have received some attention in recent years, especially with Roman ceramics, they remain understudied for Greek pottery.

This session examines the manifold trajectories of accidentally and intentionally broken Attic pottery. The assembled papers illuminate the varying circumstances under which individuals or groups of people afforded damaged Attic pots (and their fragments) further/additional lives, as well as the necessary materials, tools, and skills. Going beyond explanatory models of scarcity and economic necessity, they illuminate the properties and qualities that people or entire communities appreciated and valued in broken ceramics.

All five papers examine the second life of Attic ceramics in distinct, archaeologically well-documented contexts. The first two contributions demonstrate varying repair habits and motivations and regimes of value in Greek colonial and indigenous communities in/around Empúries and Etruria. The following paper addresses reutilization of fragmented ceramics, highlighting overlooked instances of ceramic blades from Naukratis and discussing their real and imagined use as improvised weaponry in Athens. The final two papers emphasize the ritual and symbolic affordances of accidentally or deliberately fragmented pottery. The first considers the manipulation of broken vessels in Peucetian tombs as a means of forging continuity with, and deriving legitimacy from, earlier generations; the second retraces the many lives of a single, black-glazed sherd, inscribed with a Phoenician dedication and placed within the foundation deposit of a Hellenistic temple at Doros.

This session draws attention to the value that ancient people saw in broken ceramic material and calls for greater analytical nuance and terminological precision in studies of this material. In so doing, it reframes the archaeological discourse on breaking and fragmentation. Increasing sensitivity to the constructive aspect of ceramics’ second lives, the session’s papers open promising new avenues of inquiry into human-object entanglements, ancient perceptions of value (socioeconomic, aesthetic, etc.), and memory and its materialization.