Medieval Ceramics Volume 29: Journal of the Medieval Pottery Research Group

In Liguria, the archaeological methodology applied in the excavation of monastery sites, both male and female, poses significant problems involving integration and comparison within what is certainly a more complex framework that emerges from the documentary sources. Obviously these sources refer to specific meanings for particular objects and, at the same time, describe the presence of entire categories of products that, for preservation reasons, are rarely or never included in the excavation documentation. The analysis of objects providing evidence of the communal behaviour in relation to usage and individual ownership of the material culture, so elaborate within written sources, must be limited solely to ceramic pieces. In this paper the author intends on examining such materials in order to reconstruct the economic trends in the religious communities, to determine the supply sources and therefore, through the pottery objects, to propose a social and not just archaeological interpretation of the religious context.

Excavations at 44 Clarence Street, York, by Anthony Dickson in 2006 produced an unusual late medieval vessel which could not be precisely paralleled in form or fabric. It was recommended that analysis of this vessel was undertaken and the present paper is a result of that analysis. The vessel is identified here as a product of the North Yorkshire whiteware potteries located on the western foothills of the Hambleton Hills and appears to have been a copy of late medieval Low Countries types.

Usually the average pottery assemblages from waste layers or cess pits in monasteries do not seem to have typical features to identify their origin. The research of three monastic sites in Flanders resulted in a large datset of late and post-medieval ceramics. It confirms the general picture of the use of pottery in abbeys, but it also revealed some special features, such as specific wearing marks on jugs and scratch marks, which give a link between the pottery and their monastic environment. The meaning of the specific presence of late-medieval Mediterranean tin-glazed wares in monastic sites from inland Flanders is another subject that requires special attention in this context.

Publication review

Publication review

Publication review

Medieval Pottery Research Group Accounts 2005

Preliminaries (i.e. coverpage, contents) of Medieval Ceramics 2005