This handbook summarizes basic technical knowledge about the manufacture of earthenware and its analysis. Directed towards archaeologists untrained in these fields, it is divided into three parts. The first describes the kinds of clay potters find and use, the plastic effect obtained from adding water to the paste, the drying stage, the wet-smoothing and dry-polishing processes; it introduces notions about slips, coatings, and glazes, and explains the effects of firing on the clay phase; the presence and/or addition of temper is studied next and the effects of firing on temper are analyzed. Resulting porosity and permeability, firing temperatures and atmospheres, and the fine distinctions applying to the qualities of firing conclude this first part. The second part summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of the most commonly used analytical techniques available at the time of writing. The concluding section discusses problems of provenance determination, involving themes such as paleogeography, petrographic reconstruction, reference sampling, validation of hypotheses and reliability. -- AATA