Eating, drinking, storing. A fired clay pot can serve many purposes: a cup or jug for water, milk and herbal tea; a bowl for porridge and vegetables; a storage pot for seeds, flour and herbs; or a cooking pot always kept by the hearth. The invention of pottery-making made people’s daily lives much easier. Pottery vessels were easy to make. And even when broken, they were not lost. Larger shards were reused as drinking and feeding bowls for animals. The smaller shards were ground up and mixed into the clay for new vessels.