Clay is a pretty amazing substance. Its texture ranges from the consistancy of mud to almost shatter-proof hardness. Clay is dug up from the earth's soils all over the planet, then refined and used in hundreds of items. House bricks, porcelain toilets, bullet-proof vests, dinner plates and coffee mugs are just a few items we use today that are built with clay.

Artists and craftsmen have manipulated clay over hundreds of years to create works of art and beautiful forms for utilitarian use. When clay is refined, used to build a hollow form, then fired at a high tempature, the process is called ceramics. Ceramic forms vary widely in size, shape, weight, and function throughout the world and is one of the oldest art mediums. The earliest evidence of ceramic vessels found so far has been dated to around ??? B.C.E. Since then, all of the world's cultures have endevored in making some form of ceramics for functional use, decoration, or both.

Your challenge is to build a backbone of understanding of ceramics by unearthing answers. Your task is to search this site and the specific pages it links to, to excuvate the answers to the worksheet handed out in class. The rationale behind this webquest is for you to build a basic understanding of clay, ceramics, its history, processes, and its many forms before the ceramics lesson is started in class.

You will explore four catagories in order to complete your task: (1) ceramics terminology; (2) ceramics processes; (3) ceramics history; and (4) ceramics forms. The criteria that the task will be evaluated upon is located at the rubric page. Below is a list by catagory of the fundamental questions that you should be able to answer at the completion of this webquest.