SOME ISSUES OF EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF CLAY VESSELS' FIRING PROCESS

This paper is dedicated to the study of clay vessels' firing treatment. It is one of the most important scientific tasks in the field of ancient ceramic investigations which is low provided by the reliable methods till now. The next questions are described here: first - the history of study of firing process under historical-and-cultural approach to the ancient pottery production; second - the organization and results of field experimental study of clay vessels' firing in fireplace and in oven made by the authors on the basis of Samara pottery experimental expedition (N.P. Salugina is a head of the expedition), third - the results of the laboratory research of firing temperature on experimental vessels by Bobrinsky's color method. We concentrate our attention on the study of firing vessels in oxidizing and reducing conditions, on analysis of oxidizing firing at the first step and special chemical-and-thermal treatment of vessels in reducing conditions by blacking at the second step. In the results of laboratory tests of vessels sherds' firing temperature we came to the conclusion that the method is need to improve. At the end of paper the authors put forward some kind of ways to decide the problem and a plan of future experimental study of pottery firing process.