<Last update: 1st April 2006>

Welcome to TACB:

Thissen Archaeological Ceramics Bureau

More likely than not, pottery sherds will form the bulk of your excavation, filling up bags, crates, depots and museum store rooms. Coping with this mass of stuff is tough and boring job, and there are not too many mad persons willing to deal with it over a prolonged stretch of time. It can take many years before a representative amount of this find group has been processed, or evaluated even, and it requires the zeal of a dedicated student to pursue this work.

TACB (Thissen Archaeological Ceramics Bureau) is a commercial service specialising in the Neolithic of the Balkans, Turkey and Syria. TACB guarantees that your pottery is assessed and reported within the agreed amount of time scheduled, without the starting problems usually involved of 'getting into the material', finding out the best methods to deal with the stuff in practice, or reading into the relevant literature first. Through its long-standing experience, TACB is able to start immediately, having first-hand knowledge of the general type of ceramics involved. Over the years, TACB has developed a flexible method of dealing with huge amounts of pottery sherds without sacrificing the detail, and claims an up-to-date knowledge of the key issues, typological schemes and debates at play in SE Europe, Turkey and Syria between 7000 – 2000 BC. Using TACB will cost you less time to get the job done.