Dated in Blue: Underglazed Blue Painted Earthenware

摘要

Lois Roberts's new book is a special treat for scholars and collectors of refined earthenwares, offering a host of visual delights and a wealth of quantifiable data for those inclined to tackle the interdisciplinary questions raised by the author in her introduction. I am neither a collector nor a ceramics historian, but I am a scholar who seeks to use the data in the ways Roberts suggests. As an archaeologist, I was asked to review this book with an eye to how the dated vessels might help those in my profession build site chronologies. The question of whether ceramic ware types and their decorative elements are temporally sensitive and therefore useful tools for dating archaeological sites was a challenge I was especially keen on testing.