title: Ancient Greek pottery workshops in their rural landscape setting. Exploring the intersection between production, environment, society and agrarian economy
Creators: name: Tomei, Francesca
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2525

description: The thesis aims to investigate pottery production in the rural taskscapes of the Classical and Hellenistic Greek world, focusing on how the environmental and socio-economic settings influenced the locational choices of the kiln sites in the landscape. It also aims to explore the spatial and seasonal connections of pottery making with other economic activities and how these connections create a taskscape for humans living and working in the Greek countryside. The analysis focuses on three regions of the ancient Greek world: the chora of Metaponto in Basilicata, southern Italy; the Berbati Valley in Argolid, Peloponnese; the island of Thasos, northern Aegean. They have different geomorphological and topographical settings to explore the location and affordability of resources for pottery production in different natural settings and the influence on the decision-making of the people involved in pottery production and other tasks. For each regional case study, the geomorphology and palaeoenvironment are studied to assess the availability of resources and reconstruct the vegetation landscape and the agrarian economic activities. In addition, pottery production sites are examined to determine kiln technology, the scale of production and the type of ceramic products. The application of a GIS-based approach with spatial analysis methods enables us to understand the social dimension of landscape. The Cost Distance and Least-Cost Path analysis is integrated with the calculations of labour costs for the transportation of raw materials and provides further information on the effort of movement in the land; it also assesses the temporality of the pottery manufacturing-related tasks and its combination with the seasonality of the agricultural works. The Least-Cost Path also reveals the links between pottery production sites and rural sites in the territory, and the importance of the communication networks for the movement of people, resources and ceramic products. The thesis demonstrates that the rural Greek world was not only centred on the agrarian economy but it was a more holistic world, where people were engaged in different activities tightly entangled with each other. Pottery production in the rural countryside was usually a small-scale activity focused on local distribution for everyday life. Indeed, utilitarian wares, roof tiles, and votive terracottas for rural sanctuaries were produced. The organisation of the workshop space and the energetics of the logistics of pottery production suggest that labour in the small rural workshops was part-time and not specialised, and workshop facilities could be shared by multiple part-time potters. However, there were also some large-scale production sites, such as Pantanello, where the large kilns, the organisation of the workshop, and the energy calculations suggest the employment of full-time labour, with an additional part-time workforce for the busiest firing months. Nevertheless, the ceramic products are still aimed for local distribution. The exception is the workshops of Thasos that produced amphorae part of which were stamped and aimed for overseas export. Finally, the spatial analysis approach demonstrated that the location of pottery production sites was entangled with the accessibility to raw materials, such as clay and fuel, and the presence of roads and pathways.