Color terms and consonant symbolism

[A.W. Tüting]

Am 19.07.2006 um 18:15 schrieb Koontz John E:

>> It appears that the aging process of clay mixtures seems to be a 
>> pretty
>> common way of processing worldwide (with regard to pottery in general
>> and not restricted to the production of porcelain).
>
> Not sure if this last was Alfred or his friend speaking, but I recall
> seeing some discussion of tempering in the friend's web site, and I can
> report that adding burnt shell to clay as temper is one of the 
> diagnostic
> features of Mississippian cultures (from c. 1000 AD and earlier),
> including Oneota, which has a sort of rough equivalence with early
> Mississippi Valley Siouan.  It's thought that the lime this added to 
> maize
> boiled in the pots helped break it down to make it more digestible.
> Earlier and peripheral areas used fine sand and also "grog"  - crushed
> sherds of earlier pottery - as temper.


My remark.
Your dates are highly interesting since this would be prior to Zheng He 
and his questionable 'discovery' of North Carolina. Adding burnt/ground 
shells to the clay by the Cherokee (etc.) potters is a fact; I only 
didn't know since when this process had been familiar to Natives of 
North America.

Alfred