Main principles of ancient Pottery Decoration

Yuri B. Tsetlin

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Abstract

This article is devoted to some results of an application of the historical-and-cultural approach to an investigation of ancient pottery decoration. Three main questions are discussed in it: 1) the concept of "ornament" and its cultural content, 2) the main directions and stages of development of cultural traditions in pottery decoration, and 3) the use of pottery decoration as a source of information about ancient ethno-cultural history. Pottery decoration is considered here, from one point of view, as the result of a special system of notions on external view of vessels characterizing different groups of ancient population (the "outer" cultural sphere), and from another perspectiae, as a result of specific pottery decoration traditions (the "inner" cultural sphere). […]