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XII/2/2021
INTERDISCIPLINARIA ARCHAEOLOGICA
NATURAL SCIENCES IN ARCHAEOLOGY
homepage: http://www.iansa.eu
Thematic review
Material Methods; Considering Ceramic Raw Materials and the Spread
of the Potter‘s Wheel in Early Iron Age Southern Iberia
Beatrijs G. de Groot
1*
1
The University of Edinburgh, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, William Robertson Wing, Old Medical School, Teviot Place, Edinburgh,
EH8 9AG, United Kingdom
1. Introduction
In the Iberian Peninsula, the frst millennium BCE is
a period of socio-economic and cultural transformations,
which culminated in the development of proto-urban
lifeways (Almagro Gorbea, 2014). Widespread changes
took place in the organisation of food production and
consumption, religious practices, pottery technology and
metallurgy. Fundamental to the changes taking place here
were the expansion of Phoenician long-distance trade
networks, which facilitated the spread of people and
technological innovations across the Mediterranean (
e.g.
,
Manning, 2018, p.38). In the Iberian Peninsula, Phoenician
groups settled in trade colonies on the southern coastline in
the 9
th
century BCE, utilising rural hinterlands for farming
and extracting Mineral ores from the interior mountain
ranges (Aubet Semmler, 2008; Dietler and López-Ruiz,
2009). The processes of dissemination of elements
from a Mediterranean
koine
developed into the eclectic
“orientalising” material culture styles of the southern
Iberian Iron Age (Celestino Pérez and López-Ruiz,
2016).
In and around these Phoenician colonies, workshops
appeared that utilised the potter’s wheel and double-
chambered updraught kilns to produce vast quantities of
luxury tableware as well as containers for trade goods (Mielke
and Torres Ortiz, 2012; Mielke, 2015). In the centuries that
followed, the production of wheel-made pottery expanded
across the Iberian Peninsula, outside of context of the
Phoenician colonial system (Ramón Torres
et al.
, 2007;
Delgado Hervás, 2011; García Vargas and García Fernández,
2012; Fernández Maroto, 2013; Jiménez Avila, 2013;
Mielke and Torres Ortiz, 2012; Sáez Romero
et al.
, 2021).
Despite strong evidence for the growing production and use
of wheel-made pottery outside of the Phoenician colonies,
particularly after the 7
th
century BCE (Coll Conesa, 2000),
there are still many gaps in our knowledge of the process by
which this workshop mode of production developed, how it
Volume XII ● Issue 2/2021 ● Pages 331–342
*Corresponding author. E-mail: Beatrijs.de.Groot@ed.ac.uk
ARTICLE INFO
Article history:
Received: 22
th
February 2021
Accepted: 24
th
October 2021
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24916/iansa.2021.2.16
Key words:
Iberian Peninsula
Iron Age
ceramic raw materials
Phoenicians
potter’s wheel
technology
hybridity
ABSTRACT
This paper discusses the role of clay selection and preparation in the production of wheel-made pottery
in Early Iron Age southern Iberia. The frst systematic use of potter’s wheels in the production of
Early Iron Age ceramics in southern Iberia corresponds to the establishment of pottery workshops
associated with Phoenician trade colonies, dating to the period between the end of the 10
th
and 7
th
century BCE. There are still many gaps in our understanding of how technological knowledge was
transmitted between the Phoenician workshops and “indigenous’ communities that adopted the potter’s
wheel. This paper draws upon a growing body of archaeometric and ceramic technological research to
consider clay selection strategies in these new workshops. Secondly, this paper will consider the role of
ceramic raw materials in the development of new “hybrid’ ceramic forms, particularly grey-ware. It will
hereby provide theoretical considerations surrounding the signifcance of material cultural hybridity
in answering questions raised by postcolonial archaeologists about identity, cultural transmission and
hybridisation in the context of the Phoenician colonial system.
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Beatrijs G. de Groot: Material Methods; Considering Ceramic Raw Materials and the Spread of the Potter‘s Wheel in Early Iron Age Southern Iberia
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spread and how its adoption afected existing craft traditions
in the Iberian Peninsula.
1
This paper focuses on a specifc area of the
chaîne
opératoire
of early wheel-made pottery; the selection
and preparation of clays, in order to address questions
surrounding the development of knowledge about suitable
clay and temper recipes for the production of wheel-made
pottery. Recent research has provided detailed insights into
the production process, or
chaîne opératoire,
of ceramics
produced in the Phoenician-tradition workshops (Sáez
Romero
et al.
, 2021), evidence which is important for
reconstructing the spread of technological information
relating to ceramic production across southern Iberia. By
comparing data from a growing body of archaeometric
research, this paper draws out some general conclusions
surrounding the way in which the new pottery workshops
built upon, or replaced, traditional knowledge about clay
recipes. Particular attention will be paid to the premise,
informed by ethnoarchaeological literature, that clay
selection and preparation are often a cultural “choice”,
rather than an economic or environmentally determined
solution. This paper addresses the diferent factors that
might infuence clay selection strategies for the production
of wheel-made pottery in the context of Iron Age southern
Iberia, investigating the opposition between economic and
cultural preferences.
To address the above aims, this paper also integrates
information about the procurement and preparation
of ceramic raw materials into broader philosophical
questions surrounding the adoption and rejection of new
technologies in Iron Age Iberia. In order to do so it focuses
on the development of grey-ware, a class of ceramics that
might have developed as a “hybrid” form, imitating hand-
made “indigenous” pottery but produced on the potter’s
wheel, a technology associated with the Phoenicians. The
signifcance of this type of material is analysed by focusing
on evidence for the origin of its ceramic raw materials to
understand the mixing of technological knowledge and
visual style more fully.
I take the regions of southern Iberia near the Phoenician
colonies as my primary case-study because “orientalising”
material culture and technology has been strongly
infuential in this area (omitting Extremadura due to a lack
of published archaeometric studies on early wheel-made
pottery in this region). This includes the “Tartessian” area,
the area of present-day Andalucía, as well as Southern
Portugal and Lisbon. The time-period discussed is
restricted to the frst appearance of Phoenician settlements
to the period immediately after the so-called “crisis” in the
mid-6
th
century BCE.
1
The complexity of the processes of interaction underpinning the spread
of potter’s wheels is emphasised by the suggestion that rotational devices
were used from the Final Bronze Age onwards in Central Iberia at El Castro
de Cogotas during the 9th to 7th century BCE (Padilla-Fernández, 2019).
2. Clay selection and preparation; cultural
or economic choice?
With the growing importance of post-processual frameworks
in archaeology, the development of archaeological thought
about the use of raw materials has shifted from a focus on
functional properties to culturally informed, transmitted
knowledge. Instead of striving for a “best way” in the
development of technological practices, research into the
chaîne opératoire
of ceramic production demonstrates that
there are numerous equivalent methods to produce ceramics
(
e.g.
, Dobres, 1999; Roux, 2019) and that such variation can
refect the technological styles (
e.g.
, Lechtman, 1977) of
diferent social groups. Technological variation can therefore
be used to explore questions of cultural transmission and
agency (
e.g.
, Pauketat, 2001).
In the context of raw material selection and preparation,
the earliest steps in the
chaîne opératoire
of ceramic
production, ethnographic studies demonstrate that
technological practices might not be deliberately selected,
as if choosing the appropriate tool or practice for the task
at hand “from a catalogue” (Gosselain, 1992). Instead, the
composition of ceramic pastes can refect the preferences and
material knowledge of potters, which are shaped by socially-
transmitted conventions (
e.g.
, Gosselain, 1992; Livingstone
Smith, 2000; Pauketat, 2001). Spatio-temporal patterns in the
similarity of clay recipes can therefore provide insights into
the strategies of – and relationships between – contemporary
potting traditions, as well as informing a discussion on the
long-term development of material knowledge.
Although socially-transmitted information in theory
provides an important determining factor in the selection
of clay and temper, potters establishing the frst workshops
in the Iberian Peninsula will have had to take a number of
factors into account. Such workshops will have been part
of the Phoenician commercial economy, in which ceramic
production ran parallel to other industries to facilitate the
production and long-distance trade of goods (see below).
The choice of clay and temper formed part of a wide set
of demands, such as the proximity of pottery workshops
to transport routes and food production sites, which will
have afected the choice of raw material source next to
personal preference or social conventions. Furthermore,
wheel-thrown pottery is generally produced from clay with
fne-grained non-plastic inclusions to avoid abrasion of the
potter’s hands (Rice, 2015, p.143) or marring and tearing of
the pot surface (Sinopoli, 1991, p.101), suggesting that the
properties of clays deserve attention in explaining selection.
As such, it is important to assess how innovations act as
“systems” of related technological choices, raw materials,
logistics and economic contexts (
e.g.
, Sillar and Tite, 2000).
By providing empirical evidence of continuity or the changes
in raw material selection co-occurring with the introduction of
the potter’s wheel, mineralogical and archaeometric studies
can contribute to understanding the workings of changes in
such technological systems. By focussing on the materials
from which ceramics were made, it is possible to gain
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IANSA 2021 ● XII/2 ● 331–342
Beatrijs G. de Groot: Material Methods; Considering Ceramic Raw Materials and the Spread of the Potter‘s Wheel in Early Iron Age Southern Iberia
333