Masonry oven these primitive-looking ovens were still being produced in Barnstaple potteries as late as 1890". A cloche or cooking bell is like an upside-down, fired ceramic bowl with a handle on top. It is heated in the fire along with a flat rock or open spot on the hearth. The prepared dough is placed on the hot rock or hearth floor, and then covered with the cloche, and perhaps hot coals or ashes for additional heat. The method goes back to ancient Egypt and Greece, and was probably the first form of masonry oven. It is possible to get some of
Ceramic petrography in the prehistoric Aegean. In the USA the approach is less popular, though important contributions have been made in the area of quantitative petrography. Other attempts to extend ceramic petrography include the use of automated image analysis, the palaeontological analysis of microscopic fossils within ceramic thin sections and the combined statistical classification of petrographic and chemical data from artefacts. Thin section archaeological petrography can be applied to a range of other artefact types in addition to ceramics; these include plaster, mortar, mudbricks and lithic implements. Academic papers on ceramic petrography are often published in journals such as Archaeometry, Journal of