Making and Using Pot Bellows

At the 4th Annual Vounous Symposium (2022) we wanted to make a set of pot bellows, based on ones that were excavated at Enkomi, an archaeological site in North Cyprus where metalworking was performed in the Bronze Age.

The process began by coil building and paddling şamot, a heavily grogged clay. As the bellows were formed a ridge was put near the top. This will help hold the leather tops in place, and prevent them from slipping off while they are being used. A tube was added and a hole cut in the bottom. The tuyeres, the pipes that connect the bellows to the furnace will fit inside these. The bellows were fitted with a handle. The handles aren’t strong enough to use for lifting the bellows, but later we found that they came in useful for adjusting the position of the bellows when we were getting ready to start work.

Coil building the base of the bellows

Adding the ridge

The bellows were too large for the kiln, so part of the side was torn out in order to fit them in. The wall was replaced and the kiln was filled with smaller pieces of ceramics. We had a nervous evening because we were uncertain whether the bellows would survive the firing. The walls were heavy and thick and we hoped that they had dried sufficiently to prevent cracking. The kiln was a primitive two chamber type, typical of the Bronze Age in Cyprus. The ceramics are loaded into the top, which has a perforated floor. A fire is built in a pit outside of the lower chamber of the kiln. The chimney (which was extended upwards for this firing) creates an updraft, pulling the heat through the furnace. Normally the fuel would be put in the chamber underneath the kiln, but there was concern that the concentration of heat would crack the bases of the bellows since the heat would be unevenly distributed, concentrating on the bottom of the bellows. This unevenness of the heat would cause the firing to be uneven and result in the bellows cracking.

In the furnace

Firing the furnace

The next day they emerged perfectly fired. As soon as they were cool enough we put on the leather. The goat skins we bought were not large enough, so we used some soft cowhides. The hides are wrapped around the top of the bellows, with the edges overlapped by about 12 cm. When pulling up the overlap opens up and allows air in and then it closes on the downstroke. The result is a continuous and steady airflow. Thanks to Ergün Arda for his skills and expertise in making the pot bellows.

Ever wanted to know about ancient beer and brewing?

There’s a new podcast by The Prehistory Guys featuring my friend and fellow EXARC member Merryn Dineley, an archaeologist who specialises in ancient brewing and especially the process of malting. I’ve had some of the brews she’s made and will say that the ancient recipes produce some fine beer.

There’s a lot of useful information here for both brewers and archaeologists. She takes down some of the misconceptions about the old beer/bread debate, and tells us how not knowing the brewing process has led to some misidentification of archaeological features.

So open up a favourite beer, relax, and enjoy it while learning about its long and fascinating history!

Vounous Symposium 2019

The 3rd Vounous Symposium went wonderfully well. We experimented with creating faience, including making it from locally resourced materials, resulting in what was named Vounous Blue. This year we had three furnaces, my little pit furnace from last year, one that is self drafting and one short shaft furnace. The self drafting one was used for the faience and small projects. It didn’t get quite hot enough for some things we needed, but the design was a work in progress. The shaft furnace was supposed to be for smelting ore. We had a couple of nice samples, but when we went to collect more, we found that the site was under water. Local members of Vounous will go back when the water is down and will collect more. Meanwhile we used what we had to make the pigment for the faience and smelt in a crucible. Since we had so little, we saved it for the evening of the closing ceremonies. People were impressed with the bright blue flames.

Chris, of Maunfactum Historicum carved limestone moulds for us to cast in, making replicas of knives and daggers that were excavated in the vicinity. He also carved an impressive Egyptian kopesh. We didn’t get that cast, but will try for next year. We wondered about the limestone because we’d always been told that it wouldn’t work. However the moulds we’d seen were local limestone, and we found that this worked very well. Apparently not all limestone is created equal.

The above photo is a replica of a dagger we saw at the Museum of Archaeology and Nature, Gurzelyurt ( Morphou) in its limestone mould. We’ve also cast daggers that are replicas of one that was found here at Vounous.

I wrote a short article for EXARC about last year’s Vounous Symposium. You can read it here.

Crafting in the World: Materiality in the Making

Crafting in the World is a new work that combines the world of archaeology, craft, and anthropology. It explores crafts in ancient and modern contexts and discuses the relevancy of understanding crafts to other disciplines.

I had the privilege of writing one of the chapters for this book. In it I discuss how metal objects can be read in a way that the actions of the smith can be visualised.

"This volume expands understandings of crafting practices, which in the past was the major relational interaction between the social agency of materials, technology, and people, in co-creating an emergent ever-changing world. The chapters discuss different ways that crafting in the present is useful in understanding crafting experiences and methods in the past, including experiments to reproduce ancient excavated objects, historical accounts of crafting methods and experiences, craft revivals, and teaching historical crafts at museums and schools.  


Crafting in the World is unique in the diversity of its theoretical and multidisciplinary approaches to researching crafting, not just as a set of techniques for producing functional objects, but as social practices and technical choices embodying cultural ideas, knowledge, and multiple interwoven social networks. Crafting expresses and constitutes mental schemas, identities, ideologies, and cultures. The multiple meanings and significances of crafting are explored from a great variety of disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, archaeology, sociology, education, psychology, women’s studies, and ethnic studies.

This book provides a deep temporal range and a global geographical scope, with case studies ranging from Europe, Africa, and Asia to the Americas and a global internet website for selling home crafted items."

The link to the publisher is here. It is an academic publisher, and so it is rather expensive. However some university libraries already have copies, so I would recommend seeing if your local library can get a copy, or borrow it on Inter-Library Loan. If all else fails, contact me through the website or Academia.edu for a PDF.