Talk to them about what they need, and why the protected areas are better.

A potter is looking for good quality CLAY that has minimal organic material and is a pathetically poor quality soil for growing things - think of it as a mineral like copper ore. It is mined like any other mineral. It is quite possible that the vein (the pocket or ribbon of good quality clay) has run out and they need to find a new vein elsewhere.

What this forum does is add things to clay to make plants grow better. What you mention would improve the "tilth" of the soil, but would make the dirt even less suitable for turning into pots.

I agree. Either the clay is suitable for making pots or it's not, and only mother nature over thousands of years can make it that way.

It would help to have a more complete picture of what you are dealing with and brainstorming for.

How large an area are you speaking of? Who owns it? [individual,families, village, etc] What do you mean by "their designated land"?

The artisans with whom you work ... do they want to only stay with soil-based products or branch out? How do they presently market their wares? How might they transport any of their wares to larger market? Are they paid by money or trade? How many people are you dealing with?

What is the main food source for these people? Do they have community gardens or what? If they are currently taking soil from common agricultural lands, they are on the losing side of any popular/political argument ... taking food from their own mouths, so to speak.

One possible use for the soil in their designated area, which they find unsuitable for molding/throwing, would be to manufacture adobe bricks - either baked in the sun or in the kilns they presently use.

Well, I'm brainstormed out .... good luck in your efforts.

Hi,
This isn't exactly on point to what you are looking for from this forum but have you looked into articles or books that any anthropologists might have written in regards to the area and the specific culture you are working with. Or even perhaps some articles regarding clay use and ceramics with various other cultures. It might give you a better idea of what it is they are seeking from the specific clay, and why they like certain areas.

I did my research in Africa dealing with women collecting wild resources from protected areas. Sometimes it is a completely complex reason to why groups and individuals are behaving and practicing in a certain way. It was in my case.
Good Luck, sounds like a challenging project.

Thanks for the helpful responses everyone; it's good to know that the methods I mentioned above wouldnÂt be very useful for the cultivation of good clay soil.

The problem with the soil is that it breaks easily, and the potters are not able to pull it "up" when throwing on the wheel. The plasticity of the clay is the issue-- the soil is not strong enough on its own.

Here they just use the soil itself from the mountainside rather than combining different types of soil to make quality clay. Figuring out if there are any locally existing elements to mix to their soil in order to increase its strength and plasticity is a possibility.

I'm hoping to locate and bring in an expert to give a workshop on improving the production of their clay.

To answer a few of your questions borderbarb, I don't know how to judge exactly how big the land is. Perhaps and acre or two? What I mean by "designated" is that the land is set aside specifically for the potters to use, rather than the farmland and private property of others from which they often steal earth. They bring their shovels and donkeys, dig and sift the rocks and unwanted materials from the dry, dusty earth they collect, which they then take back and process into useable clay.

The artisans make many products a day, around 150-200 per individual potter (there are approx 35 potters in the area), which they then sell for cash in bulk to middlemen who come once a week to transport the products via large trucks to other places for resale.

Also, does this mean they are even using "clay" to begin with, or are just creating it out of existing dirt? It doesn't appear that they are extracting actual clay from a vein within the earth, just dry earth from the surface...

It *sounds* like they had a higher clay content in the soil they were using earlier, but over the years, the percentage of sand has increased - that would be the -pulling up- issue.

Is this a pit with nothing much growing on it? Shallow or deep?

Do you have a good water supply? There might be a way to separate out the sand.

One idea to explore - soils with clay content high enough for pottery aren't going to be all that great for anything else, certainly not growing crops. So the owner of the good, high clay content might be willing to sell /barter / lease / enter into commercial agreement with it.

Peace Corps, Ivory Coast, class of 75. Hooya.

Either the clay is good enough or it's not ... if it isn't plastic enough, the only thing you can add to it is really high-quality clay with superb plasticity. And if you had that, cheapening it with the poor stuff would be silly.

The sifting, grinding and wetting works if the clay is high to medium quality, but there's a point where even that stops working because you no longer have enough clay particles to concentrate, and in an arid climate they need to use the water for other things. You can ask on a hard-core pottery forum if there is any way to improve the quality and yield by changing the process.

They need to find a source of higher quality clay and persuade whoever is in charge to let them use that land.

If you have a re-vegetation plan for the old plot and the new land, you can make it a suitable for growing profitable vegetables, not leave it looking like an old artillery field. That would make it better value for trading purposes.

Quality clay for mining looks like clay, with no visible grain, few rocks and it's usually breakable into chunks for processing, easily gouged with steel tools. Look along any eroded stream beds, road cuts, strongly layered sedimentary formations. Can you get a geologist out there to check for clay?

Thanks for your thoughtful replies. Clearly I'm just learning about this as I go, and you've given me some very helpful info and suggestions to go on. Much appreciated. For those interested, below is a link to an image gallery of the area in discussion:

Here is a link that might be useful: Clay mining

Is that narrow reddish band the vein of clay?

You need a locally trained geologist who can recognize the clay veins and decide if they are worth digging for. When they are all gone, it's gone.