The study of specialist production involves a number of interrelated theoretical and methological questions, among them the following: 1. What are the environmental and sociopolitical preconditions of specialization? 2. What congruence can be established between archaeological definitions of specialization and ethnographic ones? How can specialization be defined archaeologically? Processually? Sociopolitically? 3. What is the nature of the evidence for specialized production? What criteria can be used to identify specialist production and/or the products of specialists? 4. What kinds of forcing conditions, environmental of sociocultural, select for specialization? 5. Why do certain kinds of specializations appear in certain parts of a region and not in others? 6. Why, when there are several communities involved in the same craft product, may each have its own distinctive specialty? 7. How can the evolution of craft specialization be fitted into general schemes of cultural evolution? 8. What are the implications of part-time versus full-time specialization, and how can they be differentiated archaeologically? 9. Is control of production centralized or decentralized? This paper is an effort to address some of these questions with reference to pottery production.