We tried to make pottery the way the Native Americans did. They used pottery for cooking, for storing things, and for carrying water and also to drink I think. We started with a large lump of clay.
We rolled it into kind of like a snake and pinched it together to make a pot.
After our pots dried a few days we went out to the backyard and built a fire in the grill.
We set our pots on the coals just like the American Indians would have, except they didn't have those kinds of grills back then. They did it over an actual fire built with wood. But our pots exploded, and I don't think theirs did.
We did a little experiment to try to understand why our pots exploded. My guess was that whatever moisture was left could have expanded in the heat.
If we tried to do pottery again, we would let it dry longer hoping we would have less moisture.