Pottery - Composition

[Jayhawk]

Where in Kansas did you find the pottery? I live in S.W. Kansas,along the RKansas river.
I have picked up quite a bit of pottery from a couple of sites. It is clay,fine gravel,with some pieces containing mica. The mica flakes sure do sparkel. Most of what i pick up looks similar to yours.

[tomclark]

All clay pottery is made with basic clays and tempered or not.

Early fiber-tempered pottery used to be dated to 1000 BCE but now studies date to 2500 B C E in parts of Florida and Georgia. Atypical Archaic sites.

Earliest pottery in my area is also fiber/veg. tempered. Deptford, later to 700 CE. They used local exposures of clays, some greenish Pleistocene fossil bearing clays.

We have sand and shell (most often marine) tempered in later cultures.
I've seen popped minerals in some weird sherds of local pottery, looks like they crushed up mineral rocks and used some of that for tempering. Also looks like they used red ochrish limerockish stuff to color pieces.