Identifying Ceramic Vessels with the Help of Historical Photographs – A Different Approach in Late Ottoman Ceramic Research

While studying Late Ottoman ceramics, especially smoking pipes and coffee cups, I found many historical photographs showing such items together with the people using them. From here, the idea was born to try to use historical photographs to identify vessels found on excavations. The presentation attempted to do this and show that it is possible to find correlations between excavated material and vessels represented in historical photographs. Several categories are shown with matching vessels found on excavations: Women carrying water from and to the well; men fashioning and carrying large vessels; vessels used in daily life; people drinking coffee and smoking narghile and chibouk pipes.