PDS scholarship tends to be published across a vast array of disparate venues and, because of this, researchers and practitioners often struggle to make sense of what we know about PDS implementations. We initiated a search of journal-length studies related to PDS and confronted a concerning obstacle: very few of the published studies focused on PDS as an entity. In short, while there are numerous publications that highlight the contribution of PDS to classrooms or groups of teachers and several studies that explore the implementation of educational practices in PDS spaces, these studies rarely examine PDS as a multifaceted, systemic institutional practice involving multiple stakeholders, and extending across institutions. Thus, in this chapter, we present our journey to identify studies that treat PDS as an entity. We then situate our analysis within the history of PDS review scholarship and highlight implications for future research.

Chapter 5, Potting Traditions, Craft Learning, and Product Innovation, investigates traditions in production through intergenerational learning and then considers how product innovations are introduced. Moving beyond models that privilege consumer demand as the primary driver for product change, this chapter balances consumer interests with those of the workshop and long-established local potting traditions.

Chapter 3, Process, People, and Working Conditions, focuses specifically on the labor dynamics of these workshops in order to appreciate how the workplace and production process structured the working lives of complex labor groups with different specializations, statuses, and working conditions.

Chapter 1 introduces the themes, objectives, and chronological and geographic parameters of the volume. It also argues for the importance of potters as a usual case study for everyday professions of the Romans. This is because, while we have relatively few textual accounts about potters, it is nonetheless a profession that has left extensive and easily recognized archaeological remains, as well as ubiquitous and well-studied products.

Chapter 7, Internal Social Dynamics of Industry Clusters: Cooperation and Competition, considers the important role of workshop nucleation in creating communities of production, which witnessed complex dynamics of collaboration, as well as competition among workshops.

Chapter 8, Urban Industry, Topographies, and Community Relations, looks at pottery workshops in urban contexts; often seen as urban outcasts relegated to peri-urban areas, the place of ceramic workshops is instead seen as dynamically placed between a range of push-and-pull factors that change through time and through the history of cities.

Chapter 4, Cultural Practices and Ritual Lives of Potters in the Workshop, uses the archaeology of these workplaces to reconstruct daily life in the workshop. More than simply an economic hub of manufacturing, the workshop comes to be seen as a place of social experience and meaning to its occupants.

The concluding 9 draws together and reflects upon the complex social relationships and small-scale community dynamics observed in these industries.

Chapter 2, Workshops: Models versus Practice, relates the archaeological evidence of pottery workshops from the eastern Mediterranean within several well-established socioeconomic models of production organization. Then, drawing on more recent theoretical approaches, it considers alternative arrangements as reflecting important cultural practices.