To the vicinity and beyond! Production, distribution and trade of cooking greywares in medieval Catalonia, Spain
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ORIGINAL PAPER
To the vicinity and beyond! Production, distribution and trade of cooking greywares in medieval Catalonia, Spain E. Travé Allepuz 1,2 & P. S. Quinn 2 & M. D. López Pérez 1
Received: 20 March 2015 / Accepted: 9 June 2015 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015
Abstract Utilitarian greyware ceramics are one of the most abundant artefacts at rural sites in Medieval Catalonia, Spain, and were manufactured by numerous long-lived production centres. The stylistic homogeneity of this class of pottery has traditionally restricted its contribution to the archaeological interpretation of the region. However, recent scientific analyses of excavated kiln sites are offering new perspectives via the establishment of compositional reference groups for greyware ceramics. Using one such dataset, from the large workshop of Cabrera d’Anoia, this paper examines the distribution and consumption of utilitarian grey pottery at 25 Medieval sites across Catalonia. The study reveals a pattern of several regional production centres distributing their goods to small villages within the surrounding countryside and, in some cases, competing for rural markets. This is interpreted in terms of the mechanisms by which greyware pottery was distributed, as well as the sociopolitical and religious influences on its supply and demand in Medieval Catalonia.
Keywords Medieval pottery . Petrography . Geochemistry . Production . Distribution . Catalonia . Spain
* E. Travé Allepuz [email protected] 1
Medieval and Post-medieval Research Group, Department of Medieval History, Paleography and Diplomatics, University of Barcelona, Montalegre 6, 08001 Barcelona, Spain
2
Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK
Introduction Greyware cooking pottery is a common find at Medieval sites across northern Spain (Bohigas and Gutiérrez 1989), southern France (Bonhoure 1992; Bonhoure and Marchesi 1993; Pelletier and Bérard 1996; Leenhardt et al. 1996) and Italy (Brogiolo and Gelichi 1986; 1997; Milanese 2007). These coarse, reduced and usually undecorated ceramics (Fig. 1) are particularly abundant in Catalonia (González 1997; Riu 1984a), dominating pottery assemblages at rural sites from the eighth to thirteenth centuries. Several kiln sites and workshops manufacturing greyware pottery have been excavated (Riu 1990a; Travé and Padilla 2013), while others are known only from written sources (Fig. 2). Greyware production had a very persistent tradition in the area with some potteries lasting until the late twentieth century (Guerrero 1988). Given the abundance and widespread occurrence of utilitarian greyware ceramics in Catalonia, this vernacular pottery type holds potential for studying interaction between the Medieval communities that produced and consumed it. Indeed, typological studies on greywares from the sites in present-day shire of Anoia (López and Beltrán 2008, 2009) (Fig. 2) have indicated the presence of pottery from local as well as more distant production centres. This seems to su
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