Yes.  From my experience, any fire hot enough to alter the color of a fired
glaze on a refined earthenware might not deform the sherd, but it would
blacken the white parts of the sherd, giving it a truly unappealing smokey
cast.  This can also be produced (in appearance, at least; the chemical
processes are different) by burial in some soils, but most often it's
post-breakage burning, as in a house fire or burning of demolition debris.




At 09:19 PM 8/10/99 -0400, you wrote:
>On Tue, 10 Aug 1999 [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>>        2. Green shell edge turns red when effected by heat
>
>Hmm, I'm not sure about this.  Do you have really good proof (i.e.,
>crossmended sherds from differently fired areas, that are green un-fired,
>and red fired)?  From personal experience, any fire hot enough to begin
>altering the appearance of ceramic, esp. white bodied refined earthenwares
>(note how deftly I avoid the pearl-/white-/creamware debate!) and
>especially a fire hot enough to melt iron, is going to obliterate most any
>traces of decoration, and will possibly deform the shape of the sherd.  As
>I said, unless you have good proof that the vessel was originally green, I
>would suspect that you have plain old garden variety (ha ha) red shell
>edge.
>
>--Dan
>