Earth & Fire

When The Daily Post listed its photo challenge this week on the concept of elemental, it immediately brought to mind the four classic ancient Greek elements that describe all of nature – earth, air, fire and water. In the Middle Ages, these same elements were enshrined in Alchemical theory which, among other things, involved the transformation of those elements. That got me thinking about the transformative nature of fire on earth – in this case clay.

Recently, I was lucky enough to observe a session of experimental archaeology carried out to test the preservation of clay tablets written with the Greek Bronze Age script called Linear B. Scholars have concluded that the ancient tablets were not deliberately fired, but were kept as temporary records which could be erased and reworked. Therefore, they have only been preserved for us when they have been accidentally fired – such as in the destruction of the buildings in which they were housed.

For the experiment, a number of students created replica tablets using different types of clay in known shapes – elongated leaf shape and larger page shape. These were loaded into natural wicker baskets and placed in a fire pit and surrounded by wood.

The fire was lit and the baskets were soon consumed.

The clay tablets were baked, cracking, breaking and exploding in the fire. The different types of clay, the shape and thicknesses of the tablets, the depth of the scoring and the prior air-drying time were factors in the breakage.

The pieces were rescued from the ash, ready for re-assembly when cool.

The experiment was to demonstrate the method of survival in archaeological contexts of Bronze Age Greek texts – differentially fired with a rare few whole, most in fragments with missing pieces.

Elemental: The Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge.