Making Pots

Clay is very fine particles of dirt which float in a stream or river and then sink to the bottom, where they press on each other and stick together. You generally find clay along the banks of a river or stream, wherever the river is pulling dirt down off the mountainsor hills and dropping it in a quiet part of the river lower down. So people who live in river valleys, like the Harappans or the Egyptians, generally can find a lot of clay.   

But if you put your clay pot or sculpture in a fire, or in an oven (an oven for clay is called a kiln) and bake it for a while very hot, the clay is even harder and it will not get soft again even if you put it in water for a long time. This is called firing. People first began to fire clay about 6000 BC.


The most important thing that people in the ancient world did with clay was to build houses out of it by making bricks and drying them in the sun. They mixed straw with the clay to help it stick together better. This is called mud-brick, or adobe (ah-DOUGH-bee), or pise (pea-SAY). Sometimes builders fired the bricks, to make them harder and more waterproof.