Definition
Pottery is the material from which the potteryware is made, of which major types include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. The place where such wares are made is also called a pottery (plural “potteries”). Pottery is made by forming the clay body into objects of a required shape and heating them to high temperatures in a kiln to induce reactions that lead to permanent changes including increasing their strength and hardening and setting their shape.
The earliest-known ceramic objects are Gravettian figurines such as those discovered at Dolni Vestonice in the modern-day Czech Republic. The Venus of Dolní Věstonice is a Venus figurine, a statuette of a nude female figure dated to 29,000–25,000 BCE. The earliest pottery vessels found include those excavated from the Yuchanyan Cave in southern China , dated from 16,000 BCE, and those found in the Amur River basin in the Russian Far East, dated from 14,000 BCE.
The invention of the potter's wheel in Mesopotamia sometime between 6,000 and 4,000 BCE (Ubaid period) revolutionized pottery production. Specialized potters were then able to meet the expanding needs of the world's first cities .
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