Eggshell Pottery: Turning Dust into Glory

Polished black pottery is the trademark pottery ware of the Longshan culture, which differs from the previous colored pottery of the Neolithic Yangshao culture from 5,000 to 3,000 BCE. It has also learnt its name – Black Pottery Culture – as an alternative to Longshan as an identifier. The eggshell pottery items they produced are exquisite, dark and bright in appearance, with slender stems and handles. The pottery is highly polished and thin-walled, like an eggshell. The average thickness of an eggshell is 0.5 millimeters, the size of a syringe needle opening. The thinnest part of the black pottery cup is only 0.2 millimeters, which is more than half as thin as an eggshell or the opening. It can be argued that pottery is the earliest use of chemistry and a milestone for human society. It is reasonable to speculate that the appearance of ceramics as a practical vessel was connected with another significant achievement of human civilization – the agricultural revolution.