Why Do Archaeologists Study Pottery?
 There are at least four reasons why archaeologists turn to pottery in their examination of ancient sites:
(1) It was common. Since its invention in the Neolithic period around 6000 BCE, pots were useful objects that everybody could own. Clay vessels found their way into all aspects of life from everyday household use to trade to religious uses, providing evidence of how a broad spectrum of people lived out different aspects of life. Rich or poor, all owned pottery so, unlike gold or silver, there is plenty of it to be found and it reflects how ordinary people, not simply the wealthy, lived. Almost every site in the Middle East that was inhabited in ancient times is still marked by countless sherds scattered about the area.
(2) It broke easily and was not reused. When a vessel broke, it was thrown away and replaced rather than repaired. Though there is evidence that some pots were repaired, most were simply cast on the ground, where they have remained to the present. Because pots are fragile, archaeologists can assume that they were broken fairly soon after they were made and were not passed down from generation to generation. Unlike metal, hardened clay cannot be remolded into other objects by later inhabitants of the site. For the ancients, a broken pot was garbage to be thrown away, and a great deal can be learned from people by studying their garbage. Imagine what you can tell about our lives by the things that we cannot reuse and throw away, even in an era when we are conscious of recycling.
(3) It was durable. Once a pot broke, the individual sherds were durable enough to survive indefinitely. Whereas wood tends to decay and metal corrodes, pottery lasts. Unlike other materials, it is there for the archaeologist to find.
(4) It changed form often. When a pot was replaced, it was not unusual for it to be replaced by a slightly different vessel. Rims, bases, handles, and even the texture of the clay used to make the pots changed over a period of time. Certain shapes and styles of decoration were popular at certain times but faded away at others. In a sense, archaeologists look at potsherds the same way many people observe automobile styles. You can tell when a car was made by its grill, colors, or body style. Likewise, you can tell when a vessel was made by its shape, fabric, manufacture, and color.
The last reason, style change, is probably the most important one. Because archaeological remains tend to be deposited on top of each other as time passes, the pottery deepest in the ground is usually the oldest in an undisturbed site. This shape and texture of sherds found at lower levels therefore represents the style of relatively older pots. In "tells," or mounds of debris representing ancient cities in the Middle East, various levels of occupation called "strata" (singular, "stratum") can be distinguished and dated according to the pottery discovered in them. The date of a pot can be established when it is found elsewhere in a site with a datable object or inscription. When a sherd of a similar vessel is found in an ancient site, its date can be consequently established, and the styles and forms of sherds in levels below and above it can be dated relatively as earlier or later respectively. This is called "ceramic dating." Remarkably the first person to discover the value of ceramic dating was an Englishman named W. M. Flinders Petrie in 1890. The system was perfected by the American William F. Albright in the 1920s and 1930s and has become the standard method of assigning dates to ancient civilizations by modern archaeologists in the Middle East.
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