Session: #417

Theme & Session Format

Theme:
4. Polis, Empire, League and Beyond – Living in Interconnected Societies
Session format:
Regular session

Title & Content

Title:
As Far as Vases Go: Studies on Ancient Greek Pottery Trade and Its Contexts
Content:
This session aims at analyzing and shedding light on the role of trade, distribution and (re)contextualization for research on Greek pottery (Early Iron Age - Hellenistic period). The first Greek wares to be ever studied came from Italian soil, and, since then, these ceramic productions have been documented in as distant regions as present-day Galicia, the British Isles or the Crimean Peninsula. Scholarship has shown that this dispersion of materials seems to unveil large-scale trade dynamics, which would be effective thanks to the role played by numerous agents: well-based ceramic industries, dynamic markets, and consistent maritime and terrestrial commercial networks. As a result of these overseas enterprises, Greek pots became part of the material culture of different autonomous societies, which sometimes implied changes in the significance, functionality and value of these objects. Hence, this session calls for communications that contribute to the study of ancient Greek pottery outside its production area by addressing one or various of the previously mentioned aspects. Special attention will be paid to those proposals which either 1) focus on commercial contexts (i.e. ports and shipwrecks); 2) analyze the presence and distribution of Greek imports in a given area; 3) define trade routes of specific series or productions; 4) explore the resignification of Greek pots among non-Hellenic peoples and contexts (i.e. Etruscans, Iberians or Scythians).

The session is sponsored by El Sec Shipwreck Re-excavation Project (University of Valencia).
Keywords:
Greek pottery, Ancient trade, Mediterranean studies, Resignification
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:

Organisers

Main organiser:
ALEJANDRO GARES-MOLERO (Spain) 1
Co-organisers:
Diana Rodriguez-Perez (United Kingdom) 2
Agustin Diez-Castillo (Spain) 1
Affiliations:
1. University of Valencia
2. University of Oxford