Embalse del Judío Amphora Kilns
About
A pottery workshop on the Genil's left bank turned out Dressel 20 oil amphorae alongside plain wares, roof tiles, and bricks, judging by the overfired wasters littering the site. Two handles bearing previously unpublished stamps came out of the densest concentration of ceramic debris found here. The site sits within the Guadalquivir valley's dense cluster of Baetican oil-amphora workshops, active from roughly the 1st through 4th centuries CE.
What happened here
The workshop runs as a production line. Clay is dug locally, weathered over winter, kneaded and thrown, or pressed into moulds for the decorated wares. Vessels are dried under cover, stamped with the potter's name, stacked in the kiln around a central flue and fired for days with the temperature judged by eye and by test pieces pulled from a port in the side. A big firing holds tens of thousands of pots and a bad one loses the lot. Wasters are dumped in heaps beside the works. Some workshops export across half the empire and their stamps turn up thousands of miles away. Fuel is the limit on everything, so kilns sit near woodland and move when it runs out.
Sources
Nearby
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