Isturgi Terra Sigillata Workshops
About
Isturgi ran one of only two major terra sigillata hispanica production complexes on the Iberian peninsula, the other being Tricio, and forty years of digging at Los Villares de Andújar have made it the best understood of the two. Its glossy red tableware turns up everywhere Roman soldiers and settlers lived across Baetica and spilled over into North Africa. Excavators have recovered kilns, wasters, and whole sets of decorated pottery molds documenting exactly how the stamped patterns were made. Production ran through the first and second centuries, putting Trajan's reign right in its productive prime.
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
- dialnet.unirioja.es, 'The production center of hispanic terra sigillata in the Baetica'
- academia.edu, 'El centro de producción de Terra Sigillata Hispánica altoimperial de Andújar'
Nearby
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