Russian polished pottery of the 17th-18th centuries from the settlement of Ananyino-1 (evidence of excavations in 2023)

This article discusses polished pottery, which is an understudied component of Russian everyday culture of the 17th-18th centuries. The collection was obtained from excavations at the Ananyino-1 site. Pottery types included small and medium-sized pots, pot with a spout, bowls, and bottles. The morphology of the rim shapes, composition ofpottery fabrics, and manufacturing technology were studied for each pottery type. Pottery was typically produced by coil technique with subsequent finishing on potter’s wheel or entirely on potter’s wheel. This study pays a special attention to methods of surface treatment. Polishing was done over wet surface and over dry surface with preliminary moistening. The collection contains fragments of vessels with polished ornamentation. Artisans would polish by hand and on potter’s wheel, using tools made of horn and stone. Similarly to all ceramics at the settlement, polished pottery was fired in a reducing environment, although some vessels were brown-, grayor red-polished. In typological and technological context, polished pottery did not differ from other household utensils. It was used as dinnerware of high status along with porcelain. There are few studies ofpolished pottery both in the European part of Russia and in Siberia. The height of its spread in Muscovy was the 17th century. In the material evidence from Tobolsk and Mangazeya, it constitutes 3% and less of the total volume of pottery and includes the same types, polished over the entire surface or only with the polished ornamentation.