title: Ceramic art

text: There is a long history of ceramic art in almost all developed cultures, and often ceramic objects are all the artistic evidence left from vanished cultures, like that of the Nok in Africa over 2,000 years ago. Cultures especially noted for ceramics include the Chinese, Cretan, Greek, Persian, Mayan, Japanese, and Korean cultures, as well as the modern Western cultures.


title: Ceramic art

text: Elements of ceramic art, upon which different degrees of emphasis have been placed at different times, are the shape of the object, its decoration by painting, carving and other methods, and the glazing found on most ceramics.


title: Ceramic art

text: Different types of clay, when used with different minerals and firing conditions, are used to produce earthenware, stoneware, porcelain and bone china (fine china).


title: Ceramic art

text: China painting, or porcelain painting is the decoration of glazed porcelain objects such as plates, bowls, vases or statues. The body of the object may be hard-paste porcelain, developed in China in the 7th or 8th century, or soft-paste porcelain (often bone china), developed in 18th-century Europe. The broader term ceramic painting includes painted decoration on lead-glazed earthenware such as creamware or tin-glazed pottery such as maiolica or faience. Typically the body is first fired in a kiln to convert it into a hard porous biscuit. Underglaze decoration may then be applied, followed by ceramic glaze, which is fired so it bonds to the body. The glazed porcelain may then be decorated with overglaze painting and fired again at a lower temperature to bond the paint with the glaze. Decoration may be applied by brush or by stenciling, transfer printing, lithography and screen printing.


title: Ceramic art

text: Slipware is a type of pottery identified by its primary decorating process where slip is placed onto the leather-hard clay body surface before firing by dipping, painting or splashing. Slip is an aqueous suspension of a clay body, which is a mixture of clays and other minerals such as quartz, feldspar and mica. A coating of white or coloured slip, known as an engobe, can be applied to the article to improve its appearance, to give a smoother surface to a rough body, mask an inferior colour or for decorative effect. Slips or engobes can also be applied by painting techniques, in isolation or in several layers and colours. Sgraffito involves scratching through a layer of coloured slip to reveal a different colour or the base body underneath. Several layers of slip and/or sgraffito can be done while the pot is still in an unfired state. One colour of slip can be fired, before a second is applied, and prior to the scratching or incising decoration. This is particularly useful if the base body is not of the desired colour or texture.


title: Ceramic art

text: In sharp contrast to the archaeological usage, in which the term "terra sigillata" refers to a whole class of pottery, in contemporary ceramic art, 'terra sigillata' describes only a watery refined slip used to facilitate the burnishing of raw clay surfaces and used to promote carbon smoke effects, in both primitive low temperature firing techniques and unglazed alternative western-style Raku firing techniques. Terra sigillata is also used as a brushable decorative colourant medium in higher temperature glazed ceramic techniques.


title: Ceramic art

text: Studio pottery is pottery made by amateur or professional artists or artisans working alone or in small groups, making unique items or short runs. Typically, all stages of manufacture are carried out by the artists themselves. Studio pottery includes functional wares such as tableware, cookware and non-functional wares such as sculpture. Studio potters can be referred to as ceramic artists, ceramists, ceramicists or as an artist who uses clay as a medium. Much studio pottery is tableware or cookware but an increasing number of studio potters produce non-functional or sculptural items. Some studio potters now prefer to call themselves ceramic artists, ceramists or simply artists. Studio pottery is represented by potters all over the world.


title: Ceramic art

text: A tile is a manufactured piece of hard-wearing material such as ceramic, stone, metal, or even glass, generally used for covering roofs, floors, walls, showers, or other objects such as tabletops. Alternatively, tile can sometimes refer to similar units made from lightweight materials such as perlite, wood, and mineral wool, typically used for wall and ceiling applications. In another sense, a "tile" is a construction tile or similar object, such as rectangular counters used in playing games (see tile-based game). The word is derived from the French word "tuile", which is, in turn, from the Latin word "tegula", meaning a roof tile composed of fired clay.


title: Ceramic art

text: Tiles are often used to form wall murals and floor coverings, and can range from simple square tiles to complex mosaics. Tiles are most often made of ceramic, typically glazed for internal uses and unglazed for roofing, but other materials are also commonly used, such as glass, cork, concrete and other composite materials, and stone. Tiling stone is typically marble, onyx, granite or slate. Thinner tiles can be used on walls than on floors, which require more durable surfaces that will resist impacts.


title: Ceramic art

text: A figurine (a diminutive form of the word "figure") is a statuette that represents a human, deity, legendary creature, or animal. Figurines may be realistic or iconic, depending on the skill and intention of the creator. The earliest were made of stone or clay. In ancient Greece, many figurines were made from terracotta (see Greek terracotta figurines). Modern versions are made of ceramic, metal, glass, wood and plastic.


title: Ceramic art

text: Figurines and miniatures are sometimes used in board games, such as chess, and tabletop role playing games. Old figurines have been used to discount some historical theories, such as the origins of chess.


title: Ceramic art

text: Tableware is the dishes or dishware used for setting a table, serving food and dining. It includes cutlery, glassware, serving dishes and other useful items for practical as well as decorative purposes. Dishes, bowls and cups may be made of ceramic, while cutlery is typically made from metal, and glassware is often made from glass or other non-ceramic materials. The quality, nature, variety and number of objects varies according to culture, religion, number of diners, cuisine and occasion. For example, Middle Eastern, Indian or Polynesian food culture and cuisine sometimes limits tableware to serving dishes, using bread or leaves as individual plates. Special occasions are usually reflected in higher quality tableware.


title: Ceramic art

text: In addition to being a material, "terracotta" also refers to items made out of this material. In archaeology and art history, "terracotta" is often used to describe objects such as statues, and figurines not made on a potter's wheel. A prime example is the Terracotta Army, a collection of man-sized terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210209BCE and whose purpose was to protect the emperor in his afterlife.


title: Ceramic art

text: French sculptor Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse made many terracotta pieces, but possibly the most famous is The Abduction of Hippodameia depicting the Greek mythological scene of a centaur kidnapping Hippodameia on her wedding day. American architect Louis Sullivan is well known for his elaborate glazed terracotta ornamentation, designs that would have been impossible to execute in any other medium. Terracotta and tile were used extensively in the town buildings of Victorian Birmingham, England.


title: Ceramic art

text: There is a long history of ceramic art in almost all developed cultures, and often ceramic objects are all the artistic evidence left from vanished cultures, like that of the Nok in Africa over 3,000 years ago. Cultures especially noted for ceramics include the Chinese, Cretan, Greek, Persian, Mayan, Japanese, and Korean cultures, as well as the modern Western cultures. There is evidence that pottery was independently invented in several regions of the world, including East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Near East, and the Americas.


title: Ceramic art

text: Although pottery figurines are found from earlier periods in Europe, the oldest pottery vessels come from East Asia, with finds in China and Japan, then still linked by a land bridge, and some in what is now the Russian Far East, providing several from 20,00010,000BCE, although the vessels were simple utilitarian objects. Xianrendong Cave in Jiangxi province contained pottery fragments that date back to 20,000 years ago. These early pottery containers were made well before the invention of agriculture, by mobile foragers who hunted and gathered their food during the Late Glacial Maximum. Many of the pottery fragments had scorch marks, suggesting that the pottery was used for cooking.


title: Ceramic art

text: Many remarkable containers were made from stone before the invention of pottery in Western Asia (which occurred around 7,000 BC), and before the invention of agriculture. The Natufian culture created elegant stone mortars during the period between 12,000 and 9,500 BC. Around 8000 BC, several early settlements became experts in crafting beautiful and highly sophisticated containers from stone, using materials such as alabaster or granite, and employing sand to shape and polish. Artisans used the veins in the material to maximize visual effect. Such object have been found in abundance on the upper Euphrates river, in what is today eastern Syria, especially at the site of Bouqras. These form the early stages of the development of the Art of Mesopotamia.


title: Ceramic art

text: Early pots were made by what is known as the "coiling" method, which worked the clay into a long string that wound to form a shape that later made smooth walls. The potter's wheel was probably invented in Mesopotamia by the 4th millennium BCE, but spread across nearly all Eurasia and much of Africa, though it remained unknown in the New World until the arrival of Europeans. Decoration of the clay by incising and painting is found very widely, and was initially geometric, but often included figurative designs from very early on.


title: Ceramic art

text: So important is pottery to the archaeology of prehistoric cultures that many are known by names taken from their distinctive, and often very fine, pottery, such as the Linear Pottery culture, Beaker culture, Globular Amphora culture, Corded Ware culture and Funnelbeaker culture, to take examples only from Neolithic Europe (approximately 70001800BCE).


title: Ceramic art

text: Ceramic art has generated many styles from its own tradition, but is often closely related to contemporary sculpture and metalwork. Many times in its history styles from the usually more prestigious and expensive art of metalworking have been copied in ceramics. This can be seen in early Chinese ceramics, such as pottery and ceramic-wares of the Shang Dynasty, in Ancient Roman and Iranian pottery, and Rococo European styles, copying contemporary silverware shapes. A common use of ceramics is for "pots" - containers such as bowls, vases and amphorae, as well as other tableware, but figurines have been very widely made.


title: Ceramic art

text: The earliest evidence of glazed brick is the discovery of glazed bricks in the Elamite Temple at Chogha Zanbil, dated to the 13th century BCE. Glazed and coloured bricks were used to make low reliefs in Ancient Mesopotamia, most famously the Ishtar Gate of Babylon (), now partly reconstructed in Berlin, with sections elsewhere. Mesopotamian craftsmen were imported for the palaces of the Persian Empire such as Persepolis. The tradition continued, and after the Islamic conquest of Persia coloured and often painted glazed bricks or tiles became an important element in Persian architecture, and from there spread to much of the Islamic world, notably the İznik pottery of Turkey under the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries.


title: Ceramic art

text: Using the lusterware technology, one of the finest examples of medieval Islamic use of ceramics as wall decoration can be seen in the Mosque of Uqba also known as the Great Mosque of kairouan (in Tunisia), the upper part of the mihrab wall is adorned with polychrome and monochrome lusterware tiles; dating from 862 to 863, these tiles were most probably imported from Mesopotamia.


title: Ceramic art

text: Transmitted via Islamic Iberia, a new tradition of Azulejos developed in Spain and especially Portugal, which by the Baroque period produced extremely large painted scenes on tiles, usually in blue and white. Delftware tiles, typically with a painted design covering only one (rather small) tile, were ubiquitous in the Netherlands and widely exported over Northern Europe from the 16th century on. Several 18th-century royal palaces had porcelain rooms with the walls entirely covered in porcelain. Surviving examples include ones at Capodimonte, Naples, the Royal Palace of Madrid and the nearby Royal Palace of Aranjuez. Elaborate cocklestoves were a feature of rooms of the middle and upper-classes in Northern Europe from the 17th to 19th centuries.


title: Ceramic art

text: There are several other types of traditional tiles that remain in manufacture, for example, the small, almost mosaic, brightly coloured zellige tiles of Morocco. With exceptions, notably the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, tiles or glazed bricks do not feature largely in East Asian ceramics.


title: Ceramic art

text: Although pottery figurines are found from earlier periods in Europe, the oldest pottery vessels come from East Asia, with finds in China and Japan, then still linked by a land bridge, and some in what is now the Russian Far East, providing several from between 20,000 and 10,000 BCE, although the vessels were simple utilitarian objects. Xianrendong Cave in Jiangxi province contained pottery fragments that date back to 20,000 years ago.


title: Ceramic art

text: Recent archaeological excavations at Angkor Borei (in southern Cambodia) have recovered a large number of ceramics, some of which probably date back to the prehistoric period. Most of the pottery, however, dates to the pre-Angkorian period and consists mainly of pinkish terracotta pots which were either hand-made or thrown on a wheel, and then decorated with incised patterns.


title: Ceramic art

text: Glazed wares first appear in the archaeological record at the end of the 9th century at the Roluos temple group in the Angkor region, where green-glazed pot shards have been found. A brown glaze became popular at the beginning of the 11th century and brown-glazed wares have been found in abundance at Khmer sites in northeast Thailand. Decorating pottery with animal forms was a popular style from the 11th to 13th century. Archaeological excavations in the Angkor region have revealed that towards the end of Angkor period production of indigenous pottery declined while there was a dramatic increase in Chinese ceramic imports.


title: Ceramic art

text: Direct evidence of the shapes of vessels is provided by scenes depicted on bas-reliefs at Khmer temples, which also offer insight into domestic and ritualistic uses of the wares. The wide range of utilitarian shapes suggest the Khmers used ceramics in their daily life for cooking, food preservation, carrying and storing liquids, as containers for medicinal herbs, perfumes and cosmetics.


title: Ceramic art

text: There is Chinese porcelain from the late Eastern Han period (100200CE), the Three Kingdoms period (220280CE), the Six Dynasties period (220589CE), and thereafter. China in particular has had a continuous history of large-scale production, with the Imperial factories usually producing the best work. The Tang Dynasty (618 to 906CE) is especially noted for grave goods figures of humans, animals and model houses, boats and other goods, excavated (usually illegally) from graves in large numbers.


title: Ceramic art

text: Some experts believe the first true porcelain was made in the province of Zhejiang in China during the Eastern Han period. Shards recovered from archaeological Eastern Han kiln sites estimated firing temperature ranged from . As far back as 1000 BCE, the so-called "porcelaneous wares" or "proto-porcelain wares" were made using at least some kaolin fired at high temperatures. The dividing line between the two and "true porcelain wares" is not a clear one. Archaeological finds have pushed the dates to as early as the Han Dynasty (206BCE220CE).


title: Ceramic art

text: The Imperial porcelain of the Song Dynasty (960–1279), featuring very subtle decoration shallowly carved by knife in the clay, is regarded by many authorities as the peak of Chinese ceramics, though the large and more exuberantly painted ceramics of the Ming Dynasty (13681644) have a wider reputation.


title: Ceramic art

text: Chinese emperors gave ceramics as diplomatic gifts on a lavish scale, and the presence of Chinese ceramics no doubt aided the development of related traditions of ceramics in Japan and Korea in particular.


title: Ceramic art

text: Until the 16th century, small quantities of expensive Chinese porcelain were imported into Europe. From the 16th century onwards attempts were made to imitate it in Europe, including soft-paste and the Medici porcelain made in Florence. None was successful until a recipe for hard-paste porcelain was devised at the Meissen factory in Dresden in 1710. Within a few years, porcelain factories sprung up at Nymphenburg in Bavaria (1754) and Capodimonte in Naples (1743) and many other places, often financed by a local ruler.


title: Ceramic art

text: The earliest Japanese pottery was made around the 11th millennium BCE. Jōmon ware emerged in the 6th millennium BCE and the plainer Yayoi style in about the 4th century BCE. This early pottery was soft earthenware, fired at low temperatures. The potter's wheel and a kiln capable of reaching higher temperatures and firing stoneware appeared in the 3rd or 4th centuries CE, probably brought from China via the Korean peninsula. In the 8th century, official kilns in Japan produced simple, green lead-glazed earthenware. Unglazed stoneware was used as funerary jars, storage jars and kitchen pots up to the 17th century. Some of the kilns improved their methodsmil From the 11th to the 16th century, Japan imported much porcelain from China and some from Korea. The Japanese overlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi's attempts to conquer China in the 1590s were dubbed the "Ceramic Wars"; the emigration of Korean potters appeared to be a major cause. One of these potters, Yi Sam-pyeong, discovered the raw material of porcelain in Arita and produced first true porcelain in Japan.


title: Ceramic art

text: In the 17th century, conditions in China drove some of its potters into Japan, bringing with them the knowledge to make refined porcelain. From the mid-century, the Dutch East India Company began to import Japanese porcelain into Europe. At this time, Kakiemon wares were produced at the factories of Arita, which had much in common with the Chinese Famille Verte style. The superb quality of its enamel decoration was highly prized in the West and widely imitated by the major European porcelain manufacturers. In 1971 it was declared an important "intangible cultural treasure" by the Japanese government.


title: Ceramic art

text: In the 20th century, interest in the art of the village potter was revived by the Mingei folk movement led by potters Shoji Hamada, Kawai Kajiro and others. They studied traditional methods in order to preserve native wares that were in danger of disappearing. Modern masters use ancient methods to bring pottery and porcelain to new heights of achievement at Shiga, Iga, Karatsu, Hagi, and Bizen. A few outstanding potters were designated living cultural treasures ("mukei bunkazai" 無形文化財). In the old capital of Kyoto, the Raku family continued to produce the rough tea bowls that had so delighted connoisseurs. At Mino, potters continued to reconstruct the classic formulas of Momoyama-era Seto-type tea wares of Mino, such as Oribe ware. By the 1990s many master potters worked away from ancient kilns and made classic wares in all parts of Japan.


title: Ceramic art

text: Korean pottery has had a continuous tradition since simple earthenware from about 8000 BCE. Styles have generally been a distinctive variant of Chinese, and later Japanese, developments. The ceramics of the Goryeo Dynasty (918–1392) and early Joseon white porcelain of the following dynasty are generally regarded as the finest achievements.


title: Ceramic art

text: From the 8th to 18th centuries, glazed ceramics was important in Islamic art, usually in the form of elaborate pottery, developing on vigorous Persian and Egyptian pre-Islamic traditions in particular. Tin-opacified glazing was developed by the Islamic potters, the first examples found as blue-painted ware in Basra, dating from about the 8th century. The Islamic world had contact with China, and increasingly adapted many Chinese decorative motifs. Persian wares gradually relaxed Islamic restrictions on figurative ornament, and painted figuratives scenes became very important.


title: Ceramic art

text: Stoneware was also an important craft in Islamic pottery, produced throughout Iraq and Syria by the 9th century. Pottery was produced in Raqqa, Syria, in the 8th century. Other centers for innovative ceramics in the Islamic world were Fustat (near modern Cairo) from 975 to 1075, Damascus from 1100 to around 1600 and Tabriz from 1470 to 1550.


title: Ceramic art

text: The albarello form, a type of maiolica earthenware jar originally designed to hold apothecaries' ointments and dry drugs, was first made in the Islamic Middle East. It was brought to Italy by Hispano-Moresque traders; the earliest Italian examples were produced in Florence in the 15th century.


title: Ceramic art

text: Iznik pottery, made in western Anatolia, is highly decorated ceramics whose heyday was the late 16th century under the Ottoman sultans. Iznik vessels were originally made in imitation of Chinese porcelain, which was highly prized. Under Süleyman the Magnificent (1520–66), demand for Iznik wares increased. After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman sultans started a programme of building, which used large quantities of Iznik tiles. The Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul (built 1609–16) alone contains 20,000 tiles and tiles were used extensively in the Topkapi Palace (commenced 1459). As a result of this demand, tiles dominated the output of the Iznik potteries.


title: Ceramic art

text: The earliest known ceramic objects are the Gravettian figurines from the Upper Paleolithic period, such as those discovered at Dolní Věstonice in the modern-day Czech Republic. The Venus of Dolní Věstonice (Věstonická Venuše in Czech) is a statuette of a nude female figure dating from some time from 29,00025,000 BCE. It was made by moulding and then firing a mixture of clay and powdered bone. Similar objects in various media found throughout Europe and Asia and dating from the Upper Paleolithic period have also been called Venus figurines. Scholars are not agreed as to their purpose or cultural significance.


title: Ceramic art

text: Glazed Egyptian faience dates to the third millennium BCE), with painted but unglazed pottery used even earlier during the predynastic Naqada culture. Faience became sophisticated and produced on a large scale, using moulds as well modelling, and later also throwing on the wheel. Several methods of glazing were developed, but colours remained largely limited to a range in the blue-green spectrum.


title: Ceramic art

text: On the Greek island of Santorini are some of the earliest finds created by the Minoans dating to the third millennium BCE, with the original settlement at Akrotiri dating to the fourth millennium BCE; excavation work continues at the principal archaeological site of Akrotiri. Some of the excavated homes contain huge ceramic storage jars known as "pithoi".


title: Ceramic art

text: Ancient Greek and Etruscan ceramics are renowned for their figurative painting, especially in the black-figure and red-figure styles. Moulded Greek terracotta figurines, especially those from Tanagra, were small figures, often religious but later including many of everyday genre figures, apparently used purely for decoration.


title: Ceramic art

text: Ancient Roman pottery, such as Samian ware, was rarely as fine, and largely copied shapes from metalwork, but was produced in enormous quantities, and is found all over Europe and the Middle East, and beyond. Monte Testaccio is a waste mound in Rome made almost entirely of broken amphorae used for transporting and storing liquids and other products. Few vessels of great artistic interest have survived, but there are very many small figures, often incorporated into oil lamps or similar objects, and often with religious or erotic themes (or both together – a Roman speciality). The Romans generally did not leave grave goods, the best source of ancient pottery, but even so they do not seem to have had much in the way of luxury pottery, unlike Roman glass, which the elite used with gold or silver tableware. The more expensive pottery tended to use relief decoration, often moulded, rather than paint. Especially in the Eastern Empire, local traditions continued, hybridizing with Roman styles to varying extents.


title: Ceramic art

text: Tin-glazed pottery, or faience, originated in Iraq in the 9th century, from where it spread to Egypt, Persia and Spain before reaching Italy in the Renaissance, Holland in the 16th century and England, France and other European countries shortly after. Important regional styles in Europe include: Hispano-Moresque, maiolica, Delftware, and English Delftware. By the High Middle Ages the Hispano-Moresque ware of Al-Andaluz was the most sophisticated pottery being produced in Europe, with elaborate decoration. It introduced tin-glazing to Europe, which was developed in the Italian Renaissance in maiolica. Tin-glazed pottery was taken up in the Netherlands from the 16th to the 18th centuries, the potters making household, decorative pieces and tiles in vast numbers, usually with blue painting on a white ground. Dutch potters took tin-glazed pottery to the British Isles, where it was made between about 1550 and 1800. In France, tin-glaze was begun in 1690 at Quimper in Brittany, followed in Rouen, Strasbourg and Lunéville. The development of white, or near white, firing bodies in Europe from the late 18th century, such as Creamware by Josiah Wedgwood and porcelain, reduced the demand for Delftware, faience and majolica. Today, tin oxide usage in glazes finds limited use in conjunction with other, lower cost opacifying agents, although it is generally restricted to specialist low temperature applications and use by studio potters, including Picasso who produced pottery using tin glazes.


title: Ceramic art

text: Until the 16th century, small quantities of expensive Chinese porcelain were imported into Europe. From the 16th century onwards attempts were made to imitate it in Europe, including soft-paste and the Medici porcelain made in Florence. In 1712, many of the elaborate Chinese porcelain manufacturing secrets were revealed throughout Europe by the French Jesuit father Francois Xavier d'Entrecolles and soon published in the "Lettres édifiantes et curieuses de Chine par des missionnaires jésuites" After much experimentation, a recipe for hard-paste porcelain was devised at the Meissen porcelain factory in Dresden soon after 1710, and was on sale by 1713. Within a few decades, porcelain factories sprung up at Nymphenburg in Bavaria (1754) and Capodimonte in Naples (1743) and many other places, often financed by a local ruler.


title: Ceramic art

text: Soft-paste porcelain was made at Rouen in the 1680s, but the first important production was at St.Cloud, letters-patent being granted in 1702. The Duc de Bourbon established a soft-paste factory, the Chantilly porcelain, in the grounds of his Château de Chantilly in 1730; a soft-paste factory was opened at Mennecy; and the Vincennes factory was set up by workers from Chantilly in 1740, moving to larger premises at Sèvres in 1756. The superior soft-paste made at Sèvres put it in the leading position in Europe in the second half of the 18th century. The first soft-paste in England was demonstrated in 1742, apparently based on the Saint-Cloud formula. In 1749 a patent was taken out on the first bone china, subsequently perfected by Josiah Spode. The main English porcelain makers in the 18th century were at Chelsea, Bow, St James's, Bristol, Derby and Lowestoft.


title: Ceramic art

text: Porcelain was ideally suited to the energetic Rococo curves of the day. The products of these early decades of European porcelain are generally the most highly regarded, and expensive. The Meissen modeler Johann Joachim Kaendler and Franz Anton Bustelli of Nymphenburg are perhaps the most outstanding ceramic artists of the period. Like other leading modelers, they trained as sculptors and produced models from which moulds were taken.


title: Ceramic art

text: By the end of the 18th century owning porcelain tableware and decorative objects had become obligatory among the prosperous middle-classes of Europe, and there were factories in most countries, many of which are still producing. As well as tableware, early European porcelain revived the taste for purely decorative figures of people or animals, which had also been a feature of several ancient cultures, often as grave goods. These were still being produced in China as blanc de Chine religious figures, many of which had reached Europe. European figures were almost entirely secular, and soon brightly and brilliantly painted, often in groups with a modelled setting, and a strong narrative element (see picture).


title: Ceramic art

text: From the 17th century, Stoke-on-Trent in North Staffordshire emerged as a major centre of pottery making. Important contributions to the development of the industry were made by the firms of Wedgwood, Spode, Royal Doulton and Minton.


title: Ceramic art

text: The local presence of abundant supplies of coal and suitable clay for earthenware production led to the early but at first limited development of the local pottery industry. The construction of the Trent and Mersey Canal allowed the easy transportation of china clay from Cornwall together with other materials and facilitated the production of creamware and bone china. Other production centres had a lead in the production of high quality wares but the preeminence of North Staffordshire was brought about by methodical and detailed research and a willingness to experiment carried out over many years, initially by one man, Josiah Wedgwood. His lead was followed by other local potters, scientists and engineers.


title: Ceramic art

text: Wedgwood is credited with the industrialization of the manufacture of pottery. His work was of very high quality: when visiting his workshop, if he saw an offending vessel that failed to meet with his standards, he would smash it with his stick, exclaiming, "This will not do for Josiah Wedgwood!" He was keenly interested in the scientific advances of his day and it was this interest that underpinned his adoption of its approach and methods to revolutionize the quality of his pottery. His unique glazes began to distinguish his wares from anything else on the market. His matt finish jasperware in two colours was highly suitable for the Neoclassicism of the end of the century, imitating the effects of Ancient Roman carved gemstone cameos like the Gemma Augustea, or the cameo glass Portland Vase, of which Wedgwood produced copies.


title: Ceramic art

text: He also is credited with perfecting transfer-printing, first developed in England about 1750. By the end of the century this had largely replaced hand-painting for complex designs, except at the luxury end of the market, and the vast majority of the world's decorated pottery uses versions of the technique to the present day. The perfecting of underglaze transfer printing is widely credited to Josiah Spode the first. The process had been used as a development from the processes used in book printing, and early paper quality made a very refined detail in the design incapable of reproduction, so early print patterns were rather lacking in subtlety of tonal variation. The development of machine made thinner printing papers around 1804 allowed the engravers to use a much wider variety of tonal techniques which became capable of being reproduced on the ware, much more successfully.


title: Ceramic art

text: Far from perfecting underglaze print Wedgwood was persuaded by his painters not to adopt underglaze printing until it became evident that Mr Spode was taking away his business through competitive pricing for a much more heavily decorated high quality product.


title: Ceramic art

text: Stoke-on-Trent's supremacy in pottery manufacture nurtured and attracted a large number of ceramic artists including Clarice Cliff, Susie Cooper, Lorna Bailey, Charlotte Rhead, Frederick Hurten Rhead and Jabez Vodrey.


title: Ceramic art

text: Studio pottery is made by artists working alone or in small groups, producing unique items or short runs, typically with all stages of manufacture carried out by one individual. It is represented by potters all over the world but has strong roots in Britain, with potters such as Bernard Leach, William Staite Murray, Dora Billington, Lucie Rie and Hans Coper. Bernard Leach (1887–1979) established a style of pottery influenced by Far-Eastern and medieval English forms. After briefly experimenting with earthenware, he turned to stoneware fired to high temperatures in large oil- or wood-burning kilns. This style dominated British studio pottery in the mid-20th-century. The Austrian refugee Lucie Rie (1902–1995) has been regarded as essentially a modernist who experimented with new glaze effects on often brightly coloured bowls and bottles. Hans Coper (1920–1981) produced non-functional, sculptural and unglazed pieces. After the Second World War, studio pottery in Britain was encouraged by the wartime ban on decorating manufactured pottery and the modernist spirit of the Festival of Britain. The simple, functional designs chimed in with the modernist ethos. Several potteries were formed in response to this fifties boom, and this style of studio pottery remained popular into the nineteen-seventies. Elizabeth Fritsch (1940-) took up ceramics working under Hans Coper at the Royal College of Art (1968–1971). Fritsch was one of a group of outstanding ceramicists who emerged from the Royal College of Art at that time. Fritschs' ceramic vessels broke away from traditional methods and she developed a hand built flattened coil technique in stoneware smoothed and refined into accurately profiled forms. They are then hand painted with dry matt slips, in colours unusual for ceramics.


title: Ceramic art

text: The Imperial Porcelain Manufacture was founded in 1744 in Oranienbaum, Russia. It was based on the invention of porcelain by D. I. Winogradow (independent from Böttgers invention 1708, Dresden). An important collection of antique porcelain is preserved in the Russian Museum of Ceramics.


title: Ceramic art

text: The people in North, Central, and South America continents had a wide variety of pottery traditions before Europeans arrived. The oldest ceramics known in the Americasmade from 5,000 to 6,000 years agoare found in the Andean region, along the Pacific coast of Ecuador at Valdivia and Puerto Hormiga, and in the San Jacinto Valley of Colombia; objects from 3,800 to 4,000 years old have been discovered in Peru. Some archaeologists believe that ceramics know-how found its way by sea to Mesoamerica, the second great cradle of civilization in the Americas.


title: Ceramic art

text: The best-developed styles found in the central and southern Andes are the ceramics found near the ceremonial site at Chavín de Huántar (800400BCE) and Cupisnique (1000400BCE). During the same period, another culture developed on the southern coast of Peru, in the area called Paracas. The Paracas culture (600100BCE) produced marvelous works of embossed ceramic finished with a thick oil applied after firing. This colorful tradition in ceramics and textiles was followed by the Nazca culture (1600CE), whose potters developed improved techniques for preparing clay and for decorating objects, using fine brushes to paint sophisticated motifs. In the early stage of Nazca ceramics, potters painted realistic characters and landscapes.


title: Ceramic art

text: The Moche cultures (1800CE) that flourished on the northern coast of modern Peru produced modelled clay sculptures and effigies decorated with fine lines of red on a beige background. Their pottery stands out for its huacos portrait vases, in which human faces are shown expressing different emotionshappiness, sadness, anger, melancholyas well for its complicated drawings of wars, human sacrifices, and celebrations.


title: Ceramic art

text: The Maya were relative latecomers to ceramic development, as their ceramic arts flourished in the Maya Classic Period, or the 2nd to 10th century. One important site in southern Belize is known as Lubaantun, that boasts particularly detailed and prolific works. As evidence of the extent to which these ceramic art works were prized, many specimens traced to Lubaantun have been found at distant Maya sites in Honduras and Guatemala. Furthermore, the current Maya people of Lubaantun continue to hand produce copies of many of the original designs found at Lubaantun.


title: Ceramic art

text: In the United States, the oldest pottery dates to 2500BCE. It has been found in the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve in Jacksonville, Florida, and some slightly older along the Savannah River in Georgia.


title: Ceramic art

text: The Hopi in Northern Arizona and several other Puebloan peoples including the Taos, Acoma, and Zuñi people (all in the Southwestern United States) are renowned for painted pottery in several different styles. Nampeyo and her relatives created pottery that became highly sought after beginning in the early 20th century. Pueblo tribes in the state of New Mexico have styles distinctive to each of the various pueblos (villages). They include Santa Clara Pueblo, Taos Pueblo, Hopi Pueblos, San Ildefonso Pueblo, Acoma Pueblo and Zuni Pueblo, amongst others. Some of the renowned artists of Pueblo pottery include: Nampeyo, Elva Nampeyo, and Dextra Quotskuyva of the Hopi; Leonidas Tapia of San Juan Pueblo; and Maria Martinez and Julian Martinez of San Ildefonso Pueblo. In the early 20th century Martinez and her husband Julian rediscovered the method of creating traditional San Ildefonso Pueblo Black-on Black pottery.


title: Ceramic art

text: Mexican ceramics are an ancient tradition. Precolumbian potters built up their wares with pinching, coiling, or hammer-an-anvil methods and, instead of using glaze, burnished their pots.


title: Ceramic art

text: There is a strong tradition of studio artists working in ceramics in the United States. It had a period of growth in the 1960s and continues to present times. Many fine art, craft, and contemporary art museums have pieces in their permanent collections. Beatrice Wood was an American artist and studio potter located in Ojai, California. She developed a unique form of luster-glaze technique, and was active from the 1930s to her death in 1998 at 105 years old. Robert Arneson created larger sculptural work, in an abstracted representational style. There are ceramics arts departments at many colleges, universities, and fine arts institutes in the United States.


title: Ceramic art

text: It appears that pottery was independently developed in Sub-Saharan Africa during the 10th millennium BC, with findings dating to at least 9,400 BC from central Mali. In Africa, the earliest pottery has been found in the large mountain massifs of the Central Sahara, in the Eastern Sahara, and the Nile Valley, dating back to between the ninth and tenth millennium.


title: Ceramic art

text: Pottery in Sub-Saharan Africa is traditionally made by coiling and is fired at low temperature. The figurines of the ancient Nok culture, whose function remains unclear, are an example of high-quality figural work, found in many cultures, such as the Benin of Nigeria.


title: Ceramic art

text: In the Aïr Region of Niger (West Africa) (Haour 2003) pottery dating from around 10,000 BCE was excavated.


title: Ceramic art

text: Ladi Kwali, a Nigerian potter who worked in the Gwari tradition, made large pots decorated with incised patterns. Her work is an interesting hybrid of traditional African with western studio pottery. Magdalene Odundo is a Kenyan-born British studio potter whose ceramics are hand built and burnished.


title: Ceramic art

text: A ceramics museum is a museum wholly or largely devoted to ceramics, normally ceramic artworks, whose collections may include glass and enamel as well, but will usually concentrate on pottery, including porcelain. Most national ceramics collections are in a more general museum covering all the arts, or just the decorative arts, but there are a number of specialized ceramics museums, some concentrating on the production of just one country, region or manufacturer. Others have international collections, which may concentrate on ceramics from Europe or East Asia, or have global coverage.


title: Ceramic art

text: In Asian and Islamic countries ceramics are usually a strong feature of general and national museums. Also most specialist archaeological museums, in all countries, have large ceramics collections, as pottery is the commonest type of archaeological artifact. Most of these are broken shards however.


title: Ceramic art

text: Outstanding major ceramics collections in general museums include The Palace Museum, Beijing, with 340,000 pieces, and the National Palace Museum in Taipei city, Taiwan (25,000 pieces); both are mostly derived from the Chinese Imperial collection, and are almost entirely of pieces from China. In London, the Victoria and Albert Museum (over 75,000 pieces, mostly after 1400 CE) and British Museum (mostly before 1400 CE) have very strong international collections. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Freer Gallery of Art in Washington DC (thousands, all Asian) have perhaps the best of the many fine collections in the large city museums of the United States. The Corning Museum of Glass, in Corning, New York, has more than 45,000 glass objects.


title: Mountain bike

text: A mountain bike (MTB) or mountain bicycle is a bicycle designed for off-road cycling. Mountain bikes share some similarities with other bicycles, but incorporate features designed to enhance durability and performance in rough terrain, which makes them heavier, more complex and less efficient on smooth surfaces. These typically include a suspension fork, large knobby tires, more durable wheels, more powerful brakes, straight, extra wide handlebars to improve balance and comfort over rough terrain, and wide-ratio gearing optimised for topography and application (e.g., steep climbing or fast descending). Rear suspension is ubiquitous in heavier-duty bikes and now common even in lighter bikes. Dropper posts can be installed to allow the rider to quickly adjust the seat height (an elevated seat position is more effective for pedaling, but poses a hazard in aggressive maneuvers).


title: Mountain bike

text: Mountain bikes are generally specialized for use on mountain trails, single track, fire roads, and other unpaved surfaces. Mountain biking terrain commonly has rocks, roots, loose dirt, and steep grades. Many trails have additional technical trail features (TTF) such as log piles, log rides, rock gardens, skinnies, gap jumps, and wall-rides. Mountain bikes are built to handle these types of terrain and features. The heavy-duty construction combined with stronger rims and wider tires has also made this style of bicycle popular with urban riders and couriers who must navigate through potholes and over curbs.


title: Mountain bike

text: Since the development of the sport of mountain biking in the 1970s, many new subtypes of mountain biking have developed, such as cross-country (XC), enduro, all-mountain, freeride, downhill, and a variety of track and slalom types. Each of these place different demands on the bike, requiring different designs for optimal performance. MTB development has led to an increase in suspension travel, now often up to , and gearing up to 13 speed, to facilitate both climbing and rapid descents. Advances in gearing have also led to the ubiquity of "1x" drivetrains (pronounced "one-by"), simplifying the gearing to one chainring in the front and a wide range cassette at the rear, typically with 9 to 12 sprockets. 1x gearing reduces overall bike weight, increases ground clearance, and greatly simplifies the process of gear selection, but 2- or 3-ring drivetrains are still common on entry-level bikes.


title: Mountain bike

text: The expressions "all terrain bicycle", "all terrain bike", and the acronym "ATB" are used as synonyms for "mountain bike", but some authors consider them passé.


title: Mountain bike

text: The original mountain bikes were modified heavy cruiser bicycles used for freewheeling down mountain trails. The sport became popular in the 1970s in Northern California, USA, with riders using older, single-speed balloon tire bicycles to ride down rugged hillsides. These modified bikes were called "ballooners" in California, "klunkers" in Colorado, and "dirt bombers" in Oregon. Joe Breeze, a bicycle frame builder, used this idea and developed what is considered the first mountain bike.


title: Mountain bike

text: It was not until the late 1970s and early 1980s that road bicycle companies started to manufacture mountain bicycles using high-tech lightweight materials, such as M4 aluminum. The first production mountain bike available was the 1979 Lawwill Pro Cruiser. The frame design was based on a frame that Don Koski fabricated from electrical conduit and a Schwinn Varsity frame. Mert Lawwill had Terry Knight of Oakland build the frames. The bikes sold for about $500 new and were made from 1979 though 1980 (approximate run of 600 bikes).


title: Mountain bike

text: The first mass production mountain bike was the Specialized Stumpjumper, first produced in 1981. With the rising popularity of mountain bikes, Randolph (Randy) Ross, executive vice president of Ross Bicycles Inc., was quoted in the New York Times saying "I'd say these bikes are one of the biggest things that ever happened to the biking industry. Its basic look constitutes "a total shift in image" for the industry."


title: Mountain bike

text: Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, mountain biking moved from a little-known sport to a mainstream activity complete with an international racing circuit and a world championship, in addition to various free ride competitions, such as the and the Red Bull Rampage.


title: Mountain bike

text: Since the 1980s, mountain bikes have had anywhere from 7 to 36 speeds, with 1 to 4 chain-rings on the crankset and 5 to 12 sprockets in the cogset. 30-speed, 33-speed and 36-speed mountain bikes were originally found to be unworkable, as the mud-shedding capabilities of a 10-speed, 11-speed or 12-speed cassette, and the intricacies of a 10-speed, 11-speed or 12-speed rear derailleur were originally not found to be suitable combined with front shifters, although 10, 11 and 12 speed cassettes are now commonplace in single front chainring bicycles, and are also found on some mountain bikes. However, many pro-level mountain bikers have taken to using a narrower 10-speed road chain with a 9-speed setup in an effort to reduce the weight of their bike. In early 2009, component group SRAM announced their release of their XX groupset, which uses a 2-speed front derailleur, and a 10-speed rear derailleur and cassette, similar to that of a road bike. Mud-shedding capabilities of their 10-speed XX cassette are made suitable for MTB use by extensive computer numerical control (CNC) machining of the cassette. Due to the time and cost involved in such a product, they were only aimed at top-end XC-racers. However, 10-speed has become the norm by 2011 and the market leader Shimano even offers its budget groupset "Alivio" in a 10-speed version. In July 2012, SRAM announced a 1x11 drivetrain called XX1 that does not make use of a front derailleur for lighter weight and simplicity. In the 2014 Commonwealth Games at Glasgow all leading riders used 1x11 drivetrains. SRAM's new 1x12 gearing was introduced in 2016 as SRAM Eagle. This gives a single chain ring bike better ability to climb.


title: Mountain bike

text: The critical angles in bicycle geometry are the head angle (the angle of the head tube), and the seat tube angle (the angle of the seat tube). These angles are measured from the horizontal, and drastically affect the rider position and performance characteristics of the bicycle. Mountain bike geometry will often feature a seat tube angle around 73 degrees, with a head tube angle of anywhere from 60-73 degrees. The intended application of the bike affects its geometry very heavily. In general, steeper angles (closer to 90 degrees from the horizontal) are more efficient for pedaling up hills and make for sharper handling. Slacker angles (leaning farther from the vertical) are preferred for high speeds and downhill stability.


title: Mountain bike

text: In the past mountain bikes had a rigid frame and fork. In the early 1990s, the first mountain bikes with suspension forks were introduced. This made riding on rough terrain easier and less physically stressful. The first front suspension forks had about 1 to 2 inches (38 to 50 mm) of suspension travel. Once suspension was introduced, bikes with front suspension and rigid, non-suspended rear wheels, or "hardtails", became popular nearly overnight. While the hardtail design has the benefits of lower cost, less maintenance, and better pedaling efficiency, it is slowly losing popularity due to improvements in full suspension designs. Front fork suspensions are now available with of travel or more (see above under Designs.)


title: Mountain bike

text: Many new mountain bikes integrate a "full suspension" design known as dual suspension, meaning that both the front and rear wheel are fitted with a shock absorber in some form as the wheel attaches to the bike. This provides a smoother ride as the front and rear wheels can now travel up and down to absorb the force of obstacles striking the tires. Dual suspension bikes of a similar quality are considerably more expensive, but this price increase brings an enormous off-road performance upgrade as dual suspension bikes are much faster on downhill and technical/rough sections, than other forms of the mountain bike. This is because when the wheel strikes an obstacle its tendency is to bounce up. Due to some forward energy being lost in the upward movement some speed is lost. Dual suspension bikes solve this problem by absorbing this upward force and transmit it into the shocks of the front and rear wheels, drastically decreasing the translation of forward momentum into useless upward movement. Disadvantages of rear suspension are increased weight, increased price, and with some designs, decreased pedaling efficiency, which is especially noticeable when cycling on roads and hard trails. At first, early rear suspension designs were overly heavy, and susceptible either to pedaling-induced bobbing or lockout.


title: Mountain bike

text: Most new mountain bikes use disc brakes. They offer much improved stopping power (less lever pressure is required providing greater braking modulation) over rim brakes under all conditions especially adverse conditions, because they are located at the center of the wheel (on the wheel hub). They therefore remain drier and cleaner than wheel rims, which are more readily soiled or damaged. The disadvantage of disc brakes is their increased cost and often greater weight. Disc brakes do not allow heat to build up in the tires on long descents; instead, heat builds up in the rotor, which can become extremely hot. There are two different kinds of disc brakes: hydraulic, which uses oil in the lines to push the brake pads against the rotors to stop the bike. They cost more but work better. Mechanical, which uses wires in the lines to pull the pads against the rotors.


title: Mountain bike

text: Typical features of a mountain bike are very wide tyres. The original 26 inch wheel diameter with ~2.125" width (ISO 559 mm rim diameter) is increasingly being displaced by 29 inch wheels with ~2.35" width (ISO 622 mm rim diameter), as well as the 27.5 inch wheel diameter with ~2.25 widths (ISO 584 mm rim diameter). Mountain bikes with 24 inch wheels are also available, sometimes for dirt jumping, or as a junior bike.


title: Mountain bike

text: Bicycle wheel sizes are not precise measurements: a 29-inch mountain bike wheel with a bead seat diameter (the term, bead seat diameter (BSD), is used in the ETRTO tire and rim sizing system), and the average 29" mountain bike tire is (in ISO notation) 59-622 corresponds to an outside diameter of about 29.15 inches (740 mm).


title: Mountain bike

text: 622 mm wheels are standard on road bikes and are commonly known as 700C. In some countries, mainly in Continental Europe, 700C (622 mm) wheels are commonly called 28 inch wheels. 24 inch wheels are used for dirt jumping bikes and sometimes on freeride bikes, rear wheel only, as this makes the bike more maneuverable. 29 inch wheels were once used for only cross country purposes, but are now becoming more commonplace in other disciplines of mountain biking. A mountain bike with 29" wheels is often referred to as a 29er, and a bike with 27.5 inch wheels is called a 27.5 mountain bike or as a marketing term ″650B bike″.


title: Mountain bike

text: Wheels come in a variety of widths, ranging from standard rims suitable for use with tires in the 1.90 to 2.10 in (48 to 53 mm) size, to widths popular with freeride and downhill bicycles. Although heavier wheelsets are favored in the freeride and downhill disciplines, advances in wheel technology continually shave weight off strong wheels. This is highly advantageous as rolling weight greatly affects handling and control, which are very important to the technical nature of freeride and downhill riding.


title: Mountain bike

text: The widest wheel/tire widths, typically 3.8 in (97 mm) or larger, are sometimes used by icebikers who use their mountain bikes for winter-time riding in snowy conditions.


title: Mountain bike

text: Manufacturers produce bicycle tires with a wide variety of tread patterns to suit different needs. Among these styles are: slick street tires, street tires with a center ridge and outer tread, fully knobby, front-specific, rear-specific, and snow studded. Some tires can be specifically designed for use in certain weather (wet or dry) and terrain (hard, soft, muddy, etc.) conditions. Other tire designs attempt to be all-around applicable. Within the same intended application, more expensive tires tend to be lighter and have less rolling resistance. Sticky rubber tires are now available for use on freeride and downhill bikes. While these tires wear down more quickly, they provide greater traction in all conditions, especially during cornering. Tires and rims are available in either tubed or tubeless designs, with tubeless tires recently (2004) gaining favor for their pinch flat resistance.


title: Mountain bike

text: Tires also come with tubes, tubeless and tubeless-ready. Tires with tubes are the standard design and the easiest to use and maintain. Tubeless tires are significantly lighter and often have better performance because you can run them at a lower tire pressure which results in better traction and increasing rolling resistance. Tubeless-ready tires are tires that can use tubes or go tubeless. A liquid sealant is used without the tube to secure the seal to the rim. Popular tire manufacturers include Wilderness Trail Bikes, Schwalbe, Maxxis, Nokian, Michelin, Continental, Tioga, Kenda, Hutchinson, Specialized and Panaracer.


title: Mountain bike

text: Mountain bikes are available in tandem configurations. For example, Cannondale and Santana Cycles offer ones without suspension, while Ellsworth, Nicolai, and Ventana manufacture tandems with full suspension.


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: The linear attenuation coefficient, attenuation coefficient, or narrow-beam attenuation coefficient characterizes how easily a volume of material can be penetrated by a beam of light, sound, particles, or other energy or matter. A coefficient value that is large represents a beam becoming 'attenuated' as it passes through a given medium, while a small value represents that the medium had little effect on loss. The SI unit of attenuation coefficient is the reciprocal metre (m). Extinction coefficient is another term for this quantity, often used in meteorology and climatology. Most commonly, the quantity measures the exponential decay of intensity, that is, the value of downward "e"-folding distance of the original intensity as the energy of the intensity passes through a unit ("e.g." one meter) thickness of material, so that an attenuation coefficient of 1 m means that after passing through 1 metre, the radiation will be reduced by a factor of "e", and for material with a coefficient of 2 m, it will be reduced twice by "e", or "e". Other measures may use a different factor than "e", such as the "decadic attenuation coefficient" below. The broad-beam attenuation coefficient counts forward-scattered radiation as transmitted rather than attenuated, and is more applicable to radiation shielding.


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: The attenuation coefficient describes the extent to which the radiant flux of a beam is reduced as it passes through a specific material. It is used in the context of:


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: A small attenuation coefficient indicates that the material in question is relatively transparent, while a larger value indicates greater degrees of opacity. The attenuation coefficient is dependent upon the type of material and the energy of the radiation. Generally, for electromagnetic radiation, the higher the energy of the incident photons and the less dense the material in question, the lower the corresponding attenuation coefficient will be.


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: The spectral hemispherical attenuation coefficient in frequency and spectral hemispherical attenuation coefficient in wavelength of a volume, denoted "μ" and "μ" respectively, are defined as:


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: The spectral directional attenuation coefficient in frequency and spectral directional attenuation coefficient in wavelength of a volume, denoted "μ" and "μ" respectively, are defined as


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: When a narrow (collimated) beam passes through a volume, the beam will lose intensity due to two processes: absorption and scattering. Absorption indicated energy that is lost from the beam, while scattering indicates light that is redirected in a (random) direction, and hence is no longer in the beam, but still present, resulting in diffuse light.


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: The absorption coefficient of a volume, denoted "μ", and the scattering coefficient of a volume, denoted "μ", are defined the same way as the attenuation coefficient.


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: The attenuation coefficient of a volume is the sum of absorption coefficient and scattering coefficients:


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: Just looking at the narrow beam itself, the two processes cannot be distinguished. However, if a detector is set up to measure beam leaving in different directions, or conversely using a non-narrow beam, one can measure how much of the lost radiant flux was scattered, and how much was absorbed.


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: In this context, the "absorption coefficient" measures how quickly the beam would lose radiant flux due to the absorption "alone", while "attenuation coefficient" measures the "total" loss of narrow-beam intensity, including scattering as well. "Narrow-beam attenuation coefficient" always unambiguously refers to the latter. The attenuation coefficient is at least as large as the absorption coefficient; they are equal in the idealized case of no scattering.


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: The mass attenuation coefficient, mass absorption coefficient, and mass scattering coefficient are defined as


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: Engineering applications often express attenuation in the logarithmic units of decibels, or "dB", where 10 dB represents attenuation by a factor of 10. The units for attenuation coefficient are thus dB/m (or, in general, dB per unit distance). Note that in logarithmic units such as dB, the attenuation is a linear function of distance, rather than exponential. This has the advantage that the result of multiple attenuation layers can be found by simply adding up the dB loss for each individual passage. However, if intensity is desired, the logarithms must be converted back into linear units by using an exponential: formula_8


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: The decadic attenuation coefficient or decadic narrow beam attenuation coefficient, denoted "μ", is defined as


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: Just as the usual attenuation coefficient measures the number of "e"-fold reductions that occur over a unit length of material, this coefficient measures how many 10-fold reductions occur: a decadic coefficient of 1 m means 1 m of material reduces the radiation once by a factor of 10.


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: "μ" is sometimes called Napierian attenuation coefficient or Napierian narrow beam attenuation coefficient rather than just simply "attenuation coefficient". The terms "decadic" and "Napierian" come from the base used for the exponential in the Beer–Lambert law for a material sample, in which the two attenuation coefficients take part:


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: Cases of "non-uniform" attenuation occur in atmospheric science applications and radiation shielding theory for instance.


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: The (Napierian) attenuation coefficient and the decadic attenuation coefficient of a material sample are related to the number densities and the amount concentrations of its "N" attenuating species as


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: The half-value layer (HVL) is the thickness of a layer of material required to reduce the radiant flux of the transmitted radiation to half its incident magnitude. The half-value layer is about 69% (ln 2) of the penetration depth. Engineers use these equations predict how much shielding thickness is required to attenuate radiation to acceptable or regulatory limits.


title: Attenuation coefficient

text: Attenuation coefficient is also inversely related to mean free path. Moreover, it is very closely related to the attenuation cross section.


title: Pike and shot

text: Pike and shot was a historical infantry tactical formation that first appeared during the Italian Wars of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, and was used until the development of the bayonet in the late 17th century. This type of formation combined soldiers armed with pikes and soldiers armed with arquebuses and/or muskets. Other weapons such as swords, halberds, and crossbows were also sometimes implemented. The formation was initially developed by the armies of the Holy Roman Empire ("Landsknechte") and of the Spanish Crown ("Tercios"), and later by the Dutch and Swedish armies in the 17th century.


title: Pike and shot

text: By the end of the fifteenth century, late-medieval troop types that had proven most successful in the Hundred Years' War and Burgundian Wars dominated European warfare, especially the heavily armoured "gendarme" (a professional version of the medieval knight), the Swiss and Landsknecht mercenary pikemen. The emerging artillery corps of heavy cannons was a rapidly improving technology. The French army of the Valois kings was particularly formidable due to its combination of all of these elements. The French dominance of warfare at this time presented a daunting challenge to those states which were opposed to Valois ambitions, particularly in Italy.


title: Pike and shot

text: Emperor Maximilian I opposed the French armies during the War of the Burgundian Succession and the Italian wars with the establishment of the Landsknechte units. Many of their tactics were adapted from the Swiss mercenaries, but the use of firearms was added. The firearms, in conjunction with the pike formations, gave the Imperials a tactical edge over the French. Those pike and shot regiments were recruited in Germany, Austria, and Tyrol. A simultaneous development took place in the Spanish forces. In 1495 at the Battle of Seminara, the hitherto-successful Spanish army was trounced while opposing the French invasion of Naples by an army composed of armoured gendarme cavalry and Swiss mercenary infantry. The chastened Spanish undertook a thorough reorganization of their army and tactics under the great captain Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba. Realizing that he could not match the sheer offensive power of the French gendarmes and Swiss pikes, Fernández de Córdoba decided to integrate the shooting power of firearms, an emerging technology at the time, with the defensive strength of the pike, and to employ them in a mutually-supporting formation, preferably in a strong defensive position.


title: Pike and shot

text: At first, this mixed infantry formation was referred to as a "colunella" ("colonelcy"), and was commanded by a colonel. It interspersed formations of men in close order armed with the pike and looser formations armed with the firearm, initially the arquebus. The arquebusiers could shoot down their foes, and could then run to the nearby pikemen for shelter if enemy cavalry or pikes drew near. This was especially necessary because the firearms of the early sixteenth century were inaccurate, took a very long time to load and only had a short range, meaning the shooters were often only able to get off a few shots before the enemy was upon them.


title: Pike and shot

text: This new tactic resulted in triumph for the Spanish and Fernández de Córdoba's "colunellas" at the Battle of Cerignola, one of the great victories of the Italian Wars, in which the heavily outnumbered Spanish pike-and-shot forces, in a strong defensive position, crushed the attacking gendarmes and Swiss mercenaries of the French army.


title: Pike and shot

text: The proportion of melee weapons to shot varied depending on the state and era, as did the exact weapons used. In general, the later the date, the more prominent firearms were. Due to this, the role of the pike changed over time. In the late 15th century and the first half of the 16th, the pike was an offensive weapon; by the end of the 16th and into the 17th, its niche was primarily defensive, though this did not preclude fights between pikemen. The push of pike became rare and battles were increasingly resolved by shooting. Directly linked to this was halberds becoming less common, as their primary role in breaking the push became less relevant and their secondary role (repulsing cavalry) was better filled by more pikes: the French regulars abandoned the halberd in 1568 (aside from NCOs), and the Dutch not long after, while the Spanish army, as well as those of various Holy Roman Empire states, would continue to use the halberd in limited numbers into the mid-17th century (the British used the similar billhook). The predominance of shooting was not a universal advancement, however. For example, in the Wars of Religion of the 1560s and 1570s, 54% of wounds suffered by French soldiers were inflicted by swords, these being the most common weapons on the battlefield as pikemen, halberdiers, arquebusiers, musketeers, and cavalry all carried them as sidearms.


title: Pike and shot

text: In 1471, the Burgundian State organized its army into 1,250 lances of nine men each, thus its forces were 2/8 heavy cavalry (men-at-arms and sergeants), 3/8 mounted archers (who also carried hand weapons and could fight dismounted), 1/8 pikemen, 1/8 crossbowmen, and 1/8 handgunners; the last man in each lance was a noncombatant page.


title: Pike and shot

text: The Black Army of Hungary was one of the first forces to use the arquebus to a large degree. In its 1477 to 1488 wars, 25 percent of its soldiers had firearms (both arquebuses and more primitive handgonnes), an unusually high ratio for the time. The average in Europe by the end of the 15th century was that 10 percent of the infantry were equipped with firearms.


title: Pike and shot

text: According to a Castilian ordinance for "people of war" of 1497, Spanish foot soldiers were divided into three categories. One-third of the infantry carried pikes; one-third had swords and shields; and the final one-third consisted of crossbowmen and gunmen. It is in this configuration that the Spanish army won the first Italian Wars. In preparation for the Third Italian War of 1502 to 1504, Spanish general Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba set his companies at 50% pikes, 33% swords and shields, and 17% arquebuses. This ratio was flexible and could be changed as tactics required. The Battle of Cerignola, which demonstrated the power of the arqebus, had the Spanish army roughly following this ratio, with the infantry being 25% arquebusiers.


title: Pike and shot

text: Following its 1506 military reforms, Florence had an army armed 70% with pikes, 10% with muskets, and the remaining 20% with halberds, hog-spears, or other close-combat weapons.


title: Pike and shot

text: In 1515 the Black Band's companies consisted of 70% pikes, 12% arquebuses, 12% two-handed swords, and 6% halberds. For landskchechts in general, the usual arrangement was that one "Fähnlein", the standard unit, had 400 men, of whom 300 were pikemen (75%), 50 were arquebusiers (12.5%), and 50 were halberdiers or two-handed swordsmen (12.5%). Arquebusiers, halberdiers, and swordsmen all received double pay compared to pikemen.


title: Pike and shot

text: The Spanish army standardized the tercio arrangement in 1534. At this time a tercio was 14 companies of two types. The first type, numbering twelve per tercio, had 219 pikemen and 20 musketeers. The second, comprising the remaining 2, had 224 arquebusiers and 15 musketeers. Thus, at full strength a tercio had 2,628 pikemen (77%), 448 arquebusiers (14%), and 300 musketeers (9%). However in practice, muster rolls showed that tercios averaged 1,500-strong and had a ratio of 31% shot to 69% pikes. The musketeers used a particularly heavy firearm which fired balls twice the size of an arquebus's.


title: Pike and shot

text: In Venice the proportions were first fixed in 1548, at 10% halberds, 30% arquebuses, and 60% pikes. French contracts of 1562 simply specified 33% of arquebusiers. For the English 1571-2 campaign in France the recommended balance in newly formed companies was 6% halberds, 20% muskets, 34% arquebuses, and 40% pikes; this was adjusted in 1589 to 10% halberds, 30% pikes and 60% unspecified firearms. By 1600 France set a 1:1 ratio of pikes to firearms, and Spain 10% halberds, 30% pikes, 25% muskets, and 35% arquebuses. In 1560, following an order to increase the proportion of firearms, Spanish units in Italy became 54% pikes and 46% firearms. The Spanish average throughout the 16th century was 2 pikes for every 1 firearm.


title: Pike and shot

text: In the 1570s the standard infantry company in Dutch service (whether they be Dutch or foreign hires such as Germans and English) had about 150 men, including 4 officers (a captain, lieutenant, quartermaster, and barber-surgeon), 5 NCOs (two sergeants and three corporals), 15 musketeers, 65 arquebusiers, 45 pikemen, 12 halberdiers and targeteers, and 3 musicians (two fifers and a drummer). A study of a selection of Dutch companies from 1587, standardized by William of Orange, showed 34% pikes, 9% halberds, 5% swords and bucklers, and 52% firearms. Bucklers disappeared from the ranks by the end of the 16th century, as did halberds except in the hands of NCOs and bodyguards.


title: Pike and shot

text: In 1588, the English Trained Bands consisted of 36% arquebusiers, 6% musketeers, 16% bowmen, 26% pikemen, and 16% billmen. Lansdowne MS 56, attributed to Lord Burghley, states that ideally infantry formations should consist of 50% shot, 30% pikes, and 20% billhooks.


title: Pike and shot

text: In 1571 the Ming Chinese general Qi Jiguang wrote a military manual outlining his ideal compositions for military formations. In regards to missile weapons, an infantry brigade of 2,699 men was to be equipped with 1,080 matchlock arquebuses and 216 bows (40% firearms). A cavalry brigade of 2,988 men was to be equipped with 1,152 bows, 432 arquebuses, and 60 "crouching tigers", miniature bombards loaded with one hundred pellets each, essentially 21.6 kg blunderbusses (20% firearms). A wagon brigade of 3,109 men was equipped with 145 wagons, 256 swivel guns manned by two men each, and 512 arquebuses (33% firearms), plus eight proper cannons. On paper these were roughly in line with contemporary European rates but it is not known if these proportions were ever reached in practice.


title: Pike and shot

text: In 1601, Spanish regiments in the Low Countries were 44% pikes and 56% muskets and arquebuses. German ones had far fewer firearms, with 79% pikes to 21% arquebuses and muskets. Proportions changed, and by 1625 the field infantry of the German Catholic League were 58% muskets and arquebuses, 36% pikes, and 6% halberds; this changed again in 1627 to 65% muskets, 20% pikes, and 15% halberds. The ideal field ratio often deviated from the usual combat experience; skirmishes, sieges, and minor actions were far more common than large pitched battles, and pikes were not as useful in these engagements due to the pike's low value as a personal weapon (indeed, in the English Civil Wars, only 15% of battle deaths occurred in major battles, whereas nearly half occurred in battles with fewer than 250 total casualties). In 1632, the Spanish army standardized their infantry companies at 68% arquebuses and muskets and 32% pikes.


title: Pike and shot

text: Contemporary Japanese units, while heavily focused on firearms by East Asian standards, had higher ratios of other weapons to arquebuses compared to late 16th to early 17th century European formations. When Japan invaded Korea in 1592, 30% of Japanese soldiers had firearms, and the rest were equipped with pikes, swords, and bows. Firearms usage declined after 1603.


title: Pike and shot

text: In 1618–1629, the pike to shot ratio fluctuated between 1 and 2 muskets per pike for various Western European armies. 1631–1632 saw an increased proportion of firearms, with some formations being more than 80% gunmen. The standard in the Imperial Army of the Holy Roman Empire in 1641 was 66% muskets and 33% pikes. As pike-on-pike clashes became less common in field battles, so did armor. By 1660 body armor had mostly disappeared in pike and shot formations; the pikes themselves had also shortened, from 18 feet to 13 feet. During the English Civil Wars (1642–1651), both sides preferred 2 guns to 1 pike, though this ratio was flexible.


title: Pike and shot

text: At the 1683 Battle of Vienna, the Imperial Army had set its infantry companies at 61% firearms, 33% pikes, and 6% shieldmen. The English army of the Nine Years War in the 1690s still had 2 muskets for every 1 pike. Meanwhile, by 1687, the French army's ratio was set at 75–80% muskets and 20–25% pikes.


title: Pike and shot

text: At the start of the Great Northern War in 1700, Russian line infantry companies were 83% muskets and 17% pikes. The musketeers were initially equipped with sword-like plug bayonets; they did not fully switch to socket bayonets until 1709. A Swedish infantry company at the start of the war consisted of 66% muskets and 33% pikes. While they all carried swords, Swedish musketeers were not completely equipped with bayonets until 1704.


title: Pike and shot

text: The rapidly rising percentage of firearms spurred by pike-and-shot battles, until reaching near-100% by the 18th century, was generally not mirrored in non-European countries that did not adopt such tactics. Nor was the proliferation of the flintlock; matchlocks remained the most common firearms in India, China, and Southeast Asia until about the mid-19th century due to being far less complicated to manufacture. For example, by the mid-17th century, only 10–13% of Javanese soldiers used firearms, and by the 1680s, 20% of Thai soldiers used firearms. By 1825, 50% of Burmese soldiers had firearms, and as late as 1858, only 15% of the Vietnamese soldiers summoned to fight the Cochinchina campaign had firearms. By the 1840s, only 30–40% of Chinese soldiers had firearms (all matchlocks), the rest being armed with spears, swords, and bows.


title: Pike and shot

text: The armies of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, further developed the pike and shot formation. The front line of Charles' German Landsknechte consisted of doppelsöldner, renowned for their use of arquebus and zweihänder during the Italian wars. The Spanish "colunellas" continued to show valuable flexibility as the Italian Wars progressed, and the Spanish string of battlefield successes continued. The colunellas were eventually replaced by the "tercios" in the 1530s by order of Charles. The tercios were originally made up of one-third pikemen, one-third arquebusiers and one-third swordsmen. Tercios were administrative organizations and were in charge of up to 3000 soldiers. These were divided into ten companies that were deployed in battle. These companies were further subdivided into small units that could be deployed individually or brought together to form great battle formations that were sometimes called "Spanish squares".


title: Pike and shot

text: As these squares matured in usage during the 16th century, they generally took on the appearance of a "bastioned square" – that is, a large square with smaller square "bastions" at each corner. The large square in the center was made up of the pikemen, 56 files across and 22 ranks deep. The outer edges of the central pike square were lined with a thin rank of arquebusiers totaling 250 men. At each corner of this great pike square were the smaller squares of arquebusiers, called "mangas" (sleeves), each 240 men strong. Finally, two groups in open order, each of 90 men and armed with the longer musket, were placed in front of, and to the sides of, the arquebusiers.


title: Pike and shot

text: Normal attrition of combat units (including sickness and desertion) and the sheer lack of men usually led to the tercios being far smaller in practice than the numbers above suggest but the roughly 1:1 ratio of pikemen to shooters was generally maintained. The tercios for all armies were usually of 1,000 to 2,000 men, although even these numbers could be reduced by the conditions already mentioned. Tercio-type formations were also used by other powers, chiefly in the Germanic areas of the Holy Roman Empire.


title: Pike and shot

text: To modern eyes the tercio square seems cumbersome and wasteful of men, many of the soldiers being positioned so that they could not bring their weapons to bear against the enemy. However, in a time when firearms were short-ranged and slow to load, it had its benefits. It offered great protection against cavalry – still the dominant fast-attack arm on the battlefield – and was extremely sturdy and difficult to defeat. It was very hard to isolate or outflank and destroy a tercio by maneuver due to its great depth and distribution of firepower to all sides (as opposed to the maximization of combat power in the frontal arc as adopted by later formations). The individual units of pikemen and musketeers were not fixed and were re-ordered during battle to defend a wing or to bring greater fire power or pikes to bear in a certain direction. Finally, its depth meant that it could run over shallower formations in a close assault – that is, should the slow- moving tercio manage to strike the enemy line.


title: Pike and shot

text: Armies using the tercio generally intended to field them in brigades of at least three tercios, with one in the front and two behind, the rearward formations echeloned off on either side so that all three resembled a stepped pyramid. The word tercio means "a third" (that is, one third of the whole brigade). This entire formation would be flanked by cavalry. The musketeers, and those arquebusiers whose shooting was not blocked by friendly forces, were supposed to keep up a continuous fire by rotation. This led to a fairly slow rate of advance, estimated by modern writers at roughly 60 meters a minute. Movement of such seemingly unwieldy groups of soldiers was difficult but well- trained and experienced tercios were able to move and manoeuvre with surprising facility and to great advantage over less-experienced opponents. They would be co-ordinated with each other in a way that often caught attacking infantry or cavalry with fire coming from different directions from two or more of these strong infantry squares.


title: Pike and shot

text: The great rivals of the Spanish/Habsburg Empire, the Kings of France, had access to a smaller and poorly organized force of pike and shot. The French military establishment showed considerably less interest in shot as a native troop type than did the Spanish until the end of the sixteenth century, and continued to prefer close combat arms, particularly heavy cavalry, as the decisive force in their armies until the French Wars of Religion; this despite the desire of King Francis I to establish his own pike and shot contingents after the Battle of Pavia, in which he was defeated and captured. Francis had declared the establishment of the French "Legions" in the 1530s, large infantry formations of 6,000 men which were roughly composed of 60% pikemen, 30% arquebusiers and 10% Halberdiers. These legions were raised regionally, one in each of Normandy, Languedoc, Champagne and Picardy. Detachments of around 1,000 men could be sent off to separate duty, but in practice the Legions were initially little more than an ill-disciplined rabble and a failure as a battlefield force, and as such were soon relegated to garrison duty until they matured in the seventeenth century.


title: Pike and shot

text: In practice, pike and shot formations that the French used on the sixteenth-century battlefield were often of an "ad hoc" nature, the large blocks of Swiss mercenary, "Landsknecht", or, to a lesser extent, French pikemen being supported at times by bands of mercenary adventurer shot, largely Gascons and Italians. (The Swiss and "Landsknechts" also had their own small contingents of arquebusiers, usually comprising not more than 10–20% of their total force. The French were also late to adopt the musket, the first reference to their use being at the end of the 1560s—twenty years after its use by the Spanish, Germans and Italians.


title: Pike and shot

text: This was essentially the condition of the French Royal infantry throughout the French Wars of Religion that occupied most of the latter sixteenth century, and when their Huguenot foes had to improvise a native infantry force, it was largely made up of arquebusiers with few if any pikes (other than the large blocks of "Landsknechts" they sometimes hired), rendering formal pike and shot tactics impossible.


title: Pike and shot

text: In the one great battle fought in the sixteenth century between the French and their Imperial rivals after the Spanish and Imperial adoption of the tercio, the Battle of Ceresole, the Imperial pike and shot formations shot down attacking French "gendarmes", defending themselves with the pike when surviving heavy cavalry got close. Although the battle was ultimately lost by the Spanish and Imperial forces, it demonstrated the self-sufficiency of the mixed pike and shot formations, something sorely lacking in the French armies of the day.


title: Pike and shot

text: Foremost amongst the enemies of the Spanish Habsburg empire in the late 16th century were the Seven Provinces of the Netherlands (often retroactively known as the "Dutch"), who fought a long war of independence from Spanish control starting in 1568. After soldiering on for years with a polyglot army of foreign-supplied troops and mercenaries, the Dutch took steps to reform their armies starting in 1590 under their captain-general, Maurice of Nassau, who had read ancient military treatises extensively.


title: Pike and shot

text: In addition to standardizing drill, weapon caliber, pike length, and so on, Maurice turned to his readings in classical military doctrine to establish smaller, more flexible combat formations than the ponderous regiments and tercios which then presided over open battle. Each Dutch battalion was to be 550 men strong, similar to the size of the ancient Roman legionary 480-man cohort described by Vegetius. Although inspired by the Romans, Maurice's soldiers carried the weapons of their day—250 were pikemen and the remaining 300 were arquebusiers and musketeers, 60 of the shot serving as a skirmish screen in front of the battalion, the rest forming up in two equal bodies, one on either side of the pikemen. Two or more of these battalions were to form the regiment, which was thus theoretically 1,100 men or stronger, but unlike the tercio, the regiment had the battalions as fully functional sub-units, each of mixed pike and shot which could, and generally did, operate independently, or could support each other closely.


title: Pike and shot

text: These battalions were fielded much less deep than the infantry squares of the Spanish, the pikemen being generally described as five to ten ranks deep, the shot eight to twelve ranks. In this way, fewer musketeers were left inactive in the rear of the formation, as was the case with tercios which deployed in a bastioned-square.


title: Pike and shot

text: Maurice called for a deployment of his battalions in three offset lines, each line giving the one in front of it close support by means of a checkerboard formation, another similarity to Roman military systems, in this case the Legion's Quincunx deployment.


title: Pike and shot

text: In the end, Maurice's armies depended primarily on defensive siege warfare to wear down the Spanish attempting to wrest control of the heavily fortified towns of the Seven Provinces, rather than risking the loss of all through open battle. On the rare occasion that open battle occurred, this reformed army, as many reformed armies have done in the past, behaved variably, running from the Spanish tercios one day, fighting those same tercios only a few days later, at the Battle of Nieuwpoort, and crushing them. Maurice's reforms are more famous for the effect they had on others—taken up and perfected, and would be put to the test on the battlefields of the seventeenth century.


title: Pike and shot

text: After bad experiences with the classic tercios formations in Poland, Gustav II Adolf decided to reorganize his battlefield formations, initially adopting the "Dutch formations", but then adding a number of innovations of his own.


title: Pike and shot

text: He started by re-arranging the formations to be thinner, typically only four to six ranks deep, spreading them out horizontally into rectangles instead of squares. This further maximized the number of musketeers near the front of the formation. Additionally he introduced the practice of volley fire, where all of the gunners in the ranks would fire at the same time. This was intended to bring down as many members of the opposing force's front line as possible, causing ranks moving up behind them to trip and fall as they were forced forward by the ranks further back. Finally, he embedded four small "infantry guns" into each battalion, allowing them to move about independently and not suffer from a lack of cannon fire if they became detached.


title: Pike and shot

text: Gustav also placed detached musketeers in small units among the cavalry. In traditional deployments the infantry would be deployed in the middle with cavalry on both sides, protecting the flanks. Battles would often open with the cavalry attacking their counterparts in an effort to drive them off, thereby opening the infantry to a cavalry charge from the side. An attempt to do this against his new formations would be met with volley fire, perhaps not dangerous on its own, but giving the Swedish cavalry a real advantage before the two forces met. Under normal conditions detached musketeers without pikemen would be easy targets for the enemy cavalry, but if they did close to sabre range, the Swedish cavalry would be a more immediate concern.


title: Pike and shot

text: The effect of these changes was profound. Gustav had been largely ignored by most of Europe after his mixed results in Poland, and when he arrived in Germany in 1630 he was not immediately challenged. He managed to build up a force of 24,000 regulars and was joined by a force of 18,000 Saxons of questionable quality under von Arnim. Battle was first joined in major form when Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly turned his undefeated 31,000-man veteran army to do battle, meeting Gustav at the Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631. Battle opened in traditional fashion, with Tilly's cavalry moving forward to attack the flanks. This drove off the Saxons on the one flank, but on the other Gustav's new combined cavalry/musket force drove off any attempt to charge. With one flank now open Tilly nevertheless had a major positional advantage, but Gustav's smaller and lighter units were able to easily re-align to face the formerly open flank, their light guns cutting into their ranks while the heavier guns on both sides continued to exchange fire elsewhere. Tilly was soon driven from the field, his forces in disarray.


title: Pike and shot

text: Follow-up battles had similar outcomes, and Tilly was eventually mortally wounded during one of these. By the end of 1632 Gustav controlled much of Germany. His successes were short-lived however, as the opposing Imperial forces quickly adopted similar tactics. From this point on pike and shot formations gradually spread out into ever-wider rectangles to maximize firepower of the muskets. Formations became more flexible, with more firepower and independence of action.


title: Pike and shot

text: Meanwhile in East Asia, the utility of pike and shot style formations were still being tested. The Japanese army in the Imjin War supported their gunmen (25–30% of their initial force) with spear and bow levies, but the pike was not as emphasized as it was in contemporary Europe due to the lack of a large cavalry threat in either Japan or Korea. At the 1619 Battle of Sarhū, the Koreans (drawing on lessons from 1592 to 1598) deployed an all-shot formation (10,000 arquebusiers and 3,000 archers) using volley fire against the cavalry-heavy Manchus. The arquebusiers inflicted many losses on the Manchus, but were routed. This prompted a revision of military tactics in Korea. After the defeat at Sarhū, the Joseon forces revised their doctrine to have spearmen supporting the arquebusiers to better withstand shock cavalry. The new Korean force was tested against the Manchus again in 1627 and 1636–1637. Both times, they were defeated, but their performance left a strong impression on the Manchus. The first emperor of the newly declared Qing dynasty later wrote: "The Koreans are incapable on horseback but do not transgress the principles of the military arts. They excel at infantry fighting."


title: Pike and shot

text: After the mid-seventeenth century, armies that standardized the adoption of the flintlock musket began to abandon the pike altogether (flintlocks and proto-flintlocks, such as the miquelet lock, had been in use since the mid-16th century, but remained less common than matchlocks until the late 17th), or to greatly decrease their numbers. A bayonet could be affixed to the musket, turning it into a spear, and the musket's firepower was now so deadly that combat was often decided by shooting alone. Moreover, the flintlock could be loaded and fired approximately twice as fast as the matchlock, and misfired far less. The abandonment of the pike, together with the faster firing rate made possible by the standardization of the flintlock musket and paper cartridge, resulted in the abandonment of the deeper formations of troops more ideal for the melee-oriented pikemen. Military thinking switched to shallower lines that maximized the firepower of an infantry formation. By one calculation, a formation equipped entirely with mid-18th century flintlocks could output ten times as many shots in an equivalent period of time as a typical early 17th century pike and shot formation equipped with matchlocks (pike:shot ratio of 3:2), enormously changing the tactical calculus of the infantry's armament. From 1688 to 1696, 3 out of every 5 Austrian and British soldiers had a flintlock musket, the rest mostly had matchlocks.


title: Pike and shot

text: After the Battle of Rocroi fought on 19 May 1643, the Spanish abandoned the Tercio system and adopted the Line infantry doctrine used by the French. A common end date for the use of the pike in infantry formations is 1700, although some armies such as the Prussians had already abandoned the pike decades prior, whereas others such as the Swedish and Russians continued to use it for several decades afterward—the Swedes of King Charles XII in particular were using it to great effect until 1721. The Army of the Holy Roman Empire officially stopped using pikemen in 1699. It had been progressively phasing out both pikes and lances since the Thirty Years War. Following Montecuccoli's reforms in the 1660s, the paper strength of an Imperial infantry company was 48 pikemen, 88 musketeers, and 8 shieldmen. The Imperial Army used this configuration during the Great Turkish War, most famously at the Battle of Vienna, where flintlock muskets were outnumbered by matchlocks (the flintlock would not enter regular service until 1699). During the same conflict, the Polish-Lithuanian army also made extensive use of pikes. In 1703, the French army also discontinued the use of the pike, followed in 1704 by the British and in 1708 by the Dutch. Between 1699 and 1721, Peter I converted almost all Russian foot-regiments to line infantry.


title: Pike and shot

text: Even later, the obsolete pike would still find a use in such countries as Ireland, Russia, and China, generally in the hands of desperate peasant rebels who did not have access to firearms. One attempt to resurrect the pike as a primary infantry weapon occurred during the American Civil War when the Confederate States of America planned to recruit twenty regiments of pikemen in 1862. In April 1862 it was authorized that every Confederate infantry regiment would include two companies of pikemen, a plan supported by Robert E. Lee. Many pikes were produced but were never used in battle and the plan to include pikemen in the army was abandoned.


title: Meskhetian Turks

text: Meskhetian Turks, also referred to as Turkish Meskhetians, Ahiska Turks, and Turkish Ahiskans, ( "Meskhetis turk'ebi") are an ethnic subgroup of Turks formerly inhabiting the Meskheti region of Georgia, along the border with Turkey. The Turkish presence in Meskheti began with the Turkish military expedition of 1578, although Turkic tribes had settled in the region as early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries.


title: Meskhetian Turks

text: Today, the Meskhetian Turks are widely dispersed throughout the former Soviet Union (as well as in Turkey and the United States) due to forced deportations during World War II. At the time, the Soviet Union was preparing to launch a pressure campaign against Turkey and Joseph Stalin wanted to clear the strategic Turkish population in Meskheti who were likely to be hostile to Soviet intentions. In 1944, the Meskhetian Turks were accused of smuggling, banditry and espionage in collaboration with their kin across the Turkish border. Expelled by Joseph Stalin from Georgia in 1944, they faced discrimination and human rights abuses before and after deportation. Approximately 115,000 Meskhetian Turks were deported to Central Asia and subsequently only a few hundred have been able to return to Georgia as Georgia does not allow repatriation. Those who migrated to Ukraine in 1990 settled in shanty towns, inhabited by seasonal workers.


title: Meskhetian Turks

text: Most Meskhetian Turks identify themselves as having descended from Ottoman settlers. Pro-Georgian historiography has traditionally argued that the Meskhetian Turks, who speak the Kars dialect of the Turkish language and belong to the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, are simply Turkified Meskhetians (an ethnographic subgroup of Georgians) converted to Islam in the period between the sixteenth century and 1829, when the region of Samtskhe–Javakheti (Historical Meskheti) was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. However, the Russian anthropologist and historian Professor Anatoly Michailovich Khazanov has argued against the pro-Georgian narrative and has said that:


title: Meskhetian Turks

text: Anthropologist Kathryn Tomlinson has pointed out that in Soviet documents about the 1944 deportations of the Meskhetian Turks, the community were referred to simply as "Turks" because of their faith Islam, not only them but also every Muslim of Georgia was referred as Turks and that it was after their second deportation from Uzbekistan that the term "Meskhetian Turks" was invented. According to Ronald Wixman, the term "Meskhetian" only came into use in the late 1950s. Indeed, the majority of the Meskhetian Turks call themselves simply as "Turks" or "Ahiskan Turks" () referring to the region, meaning "Turks of Ahiska Region". The Meskhetians claim sometimes that the medieval Cumans-Kipchaks of Georgia (Kipchaks in Georgia) may have been one of their possible ancestors. According to historians, it is less likely because part of the Kipchaks left Georgia during the invasion of Mongols, while others joined Mongols.