Pottery for Food

Characteristics

Learn how people of the past made bowls and dishes, and how the development of farming tools changed people’s lives.

Background

Food is a necessity of life, and studying what people ate can reveal important information about the lives of the people of the past. Early people had to hunt and collect their food from the forest, but eventually they learned how to grow their own food. Once people began farming, they had more food to eat, and they did not have to move around in search of food, so they built houses and settled in villages. With the invention of agriculture, people needed stone tools for farming and clay pots to store their grains. As these tools were improved, the amount of food that people could grow increased. Studying the bowls, dishes, and jars that people used can teach us about what they ate and how they lived, from prehistoric times to the Joseon period. This section includes many hands-on activities, where you can see a kiln replica, have fun in the photo-zone of the pottery-making workshop, handle various farming tools, and put together a puzzle of ceramic shards. Through these activities, we can discover how our ancestors cooked and ate their food.