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POTTERY TECHNOLOGY AND THE QUESTION OF

PRE-URBAN AND EARLY URBAN TRANSFORMATIONS IN

SOUTHERN LAZIO

BY

MARIANNE MAASKANT-KLEIBRINK and PETER ATTEMA

Abstract

In this contribution, five, interlinked archaeological research projects, conducted by the Groningen archaeological department on centralisation and urbanisation processes in southern Lazio, wil! be discussed: (1) the excavation at Borgo Le Ferriere (Satricum) di­rected by Prof. Maaskant-Kleibrink; (2) the Pontine Region Project directed by Prof. Attema (PRP); (3) the studies on technological and economic change by Or. Nijboer; (4) the study of cults by Or. Bouma; and (S) the Lazio Ceramic Research Project (LCRP), in which all the above researchers and the Groningen laboratory par­ticipate.

The last-mentioned, combined project has resulted in the identi­fication of a number of fabric categories and pottery wares. These Maaskant-Kleibrink wil! discuss for each of the closed features (huts and houses) excavated at Borgo Le Ferriere (Satricum) and then extend the discussion to some of the conclusions that Attema has reached on the spread of these in the various landscapes of southern Lazio.

In the LCRP, we hope to be able to roughly date and locate the main colonization patterns; first that of the early Latins, then that of the first Archaic towns, and lastly the movements of the first Ro­man colonization in the Pontine region. It has been claimed th at significant changes, observable in pottery production, coincide with the social, economic and religious changes in Lazio and, conse­quently, that the transition from huts to houses is, to some extent, identifiable with the fabric and ware groups.

In the period 1976-91, the Groningen Institute of Archae­

ology (GIA) excavated, under the direction of the first au­

thor, parts of an ancient Latin settIement along the River

Astura ne ar present-day Borgo Le FelTiere, known as Satri­

cum, situated 60 km south of Rome (Satricum l and II).

Since 1987, the GlA has also been involved in a regional

survey undertaken by the Pontine Region Project (PRP) in

the same area, a project that is being coordinated by the sec­

ond author (Attema 1993) (Figs. 1 and 2). The ceramic da­

tabase resulting from these two long-telm, field projects is

currently the subject of a regional, pottery-research pro­

gramme calTied out by GIA members.1 The program me

combines the stratigraphical information on the ceramics

deriving from the main features known at Satricum with the

regional distribution patterns furnished by the PRP within a

fabric-and-ware based research program me (cf. Adams & Adams 1991). It aims at establishing a fabric-classification

system of common impasto and com'se-ware sherd material,

to which a chronologically arranged ware typology and

functional classification will be related. The results will be

published in a field manual, in order to facilitate the quanti­

tative and qualitative processing of excavation and survey

ceramics from southern Lazio. The theoretical aim of the re­

search program me is to be able to address broad, cultural

questions pertaining to centralisation, urbanisation and col­

onisation processes, such as that raised by this conference

on the transition from huts to houses, from a regional per­

spective.

A SHORT COMMENT ON THE SATRICUM STRA TIGRAPHY

At the end of the 19th century, the ancient Latin settIement

hill with its sacred centre, Satricum, then called Poggio

delle Ferriere, was excavated by an archaeological team

from the Villa Giulia Museum at Rome, while, between the

late nineteen-seventies and the present-day, the site, which

is one of the oldest Latin settlements known in southern

Lazio, has been the subject of Dutch excavations. At Satri­

cum, the transition from huts to houses is a clear, stratigra­

phical phenomenon, since the hut pits are below the houses.

More precisely, the features dating from the 9th to the 7th

centuries B.C. are pits and trenc11es cut into the virgin soil,

while the 6th-5th-centuries B.C. foundation walls of the

houses stand on top of this soil (Fig. 3). Presumably, the ex­

tensive levelling which the building of large, Archaic court­

yard-houses with dimensions of 25 x 25 m demanded trun­

cated much of the upper structures of the huts. Still, even if

we take into account a severe truncation of the earlier, Iron

Age features, the Iron Age pits found on the Poggio delle

Ferriere are anomalous when compared with the remains of

huts found in Rome (Davico 1951, 125ff.), Lavinium

(Fenelli & Guaitoli 1990, 182ff.) and Ficana (Brandt 1996,

4 lff.). At those sites, substantial wall trenches and post

I The participants in this program me are Drs. A. B eijer, A. Nijboer and G. Van Oortmerssen. The coordination is in hands of Profs. M. Kleibrink and P.A J. Attema.

416 Marianne Maaskant-Kleibrink and Peter Attema

,', , ' , .

Fig. 1 . Location o f GIA fieldwork area in Italy.

holes form the unequivocal evidence of individual huts,

while at Satricum, especiaUy in the hill 's centre, the archae­

ological remains consist only of relatively deep pits filled

with bones and pottery fragments. Another difference be­

tween Ficana and Lavinium, on the one hand, and Satricum,

on the other, is the neat arrangement of the pits at the latter

site in a half-circ1e, while the arrangement elsewhere seems

much more random. The most important anomaly, however,

is the fact that, between the arrangement of the central hut

pits at Satricum, not a single burial was found, while, be­

tween the huts at Lavinium and Ficana, graves, especially

children's graves, are a very noteworthy feature (Fenelli & Guaitoli 1990, 182ff.; Brandt 1996, 1 15ff.). For Satricum,

as is explained elsewhere, we have postulated a religious

function for the central pits on account of the lack of fum

post holes and wall trenches and the fact that the pits occur

around wh at we consider a sacred place (a lacus) (Maas­

kant-Kleibrink 1995, 123ff.). In later times, near this sacred

place, three successive temples of Mater Matuta arose. That

the centre was sacred already in the 9th century B.C. is evi­

dent from the number of early miniature vessels found in

the earliest votive deposit.2

That the hill was fairly intensively used already during

the late 9th and larger part of the 8th century B.C.-the first

settlement phase-is evident from the fill of pits VG 4, 7, 8,

12 and 14, as well as GR 1 and 2.3 During the late 8th and

the first part of the 7th century B.C.-the second settlement

phase ( IIA)-this use became still more intensive: more

cooking pits and new rubbish pits were dug into the vU'gin

soil (GR 5 and 7 and RP 3, as weIl as VG 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 1 1

and 13).4 As is evident from the hut pits of the second pe-

Fig. 2. The Pontine region, the Jocation of the Satricum excavation and the survey areas.

riod, the hill was still used in the traditional way, when hut

dwelling was still customary. However, during the second

part of the 7th century B.C., dwelling on semi-interred, hut

floors changed into dwelling in larger timber structures with

level floors. Orientalising-period finds, such as holmoi, im­

pasto kantharoi and carinated bowls, as weil as small

amounts of bucchero sherds, were found associated with

large stretches of bumed soil on top of and in between

stretches of wattle-and-daub, together with a small amount

of thin, red, roof tiles. We relate these finds to wall trenches

and post holes in an area south of the Archaic court yard­

building A. They were found at a level bel ow the foundation

walls of the later court yard-house. There was enough evi­

dence to conc1ude that in the Orientalising period a long

structure with wattle-and-daub waIls, which was bumed

down completely, had been present in the area south of

court yard-house A. As this was possibly the forerunner to

court yard-house A, the structure was labelled AA (Fig. 3). It had an east-west orientation, and the two small graves

with bucchero pots found to the north in a similar alignment

must have belonged to it. The Archaic court yard-building A

was laid out immediately to the north of AA; a stretch of

roof tiles with pottery undemeath clearly indicated the col­

laps of its roof. The area of court yard-house A itself may in

the Orientalising period have contained wooden structures

similar to AA, because the fiU of hut pit GR 3 (the so-called

upper hem·th), the fiU of storage pit 3 and the levelling layer

2 Of the miniature jars, seven are of the cordoned type: nos. 10 9, 113,392,393,1167 , 1174 and 15 10 . 3 GR stands for the pits excavated by the GIA (see Satricul11 li, 115 fO, while VG signifies the pits excavated in the 19th century. The finds from the latter are now kept in the Villa Giulia Museum in Rome . .j RP stands for rubbish pit.

Pottery technology and the question of pre-w'ban and early urban transformations 417

c I o

POGGIO DELLE FERRIERE

RUG-GIA-HW9G

Fig. 3. Hut and house plans at Satricum.

underneath A all contained Orientalising-period finds, in­

c1uding bucchero sherds, the hallmark of period lIB on the

settlement hilI.

The stratigraphical sequence of the settIement is as follows

(see also Table 1 ):

(1) Hut features dating to Le Ferriere phases l and 1I (825-

650 B.C.), cut into the soil.

(2) A levelling layer dating to phase lIB (650-600 B.C.),

containing bucchero.

(3) A long, presumably mainly wooden building with

wattle-and-daub walls, partly covered with roof tiles dating

to phase l IB, the second part of the 7th century B.C., and

containing bucchero.

(4) Large court yard-houses entirely covered by tiles, dating

from the late 7th and the 6th centuries B.C., which is phase

III at Le Ferriere.

(5) A rebuilding of the court yard-houses in the last decades

of the 6th century B.C. with long wings, phase IV.

(6) A votive deposit and a necropolis of the 5th and 4th cen­

turies B.C., phases IV and V.

THE POTTERY-RESEARCH PROGRAMME

In the fifteen years of GIA excavations on the Poggio delle

Ferriere (Satricum), large quantities of sherds from various

contexts were processed, in order to date the just discussed

features and strata and to try to ascertain their functions.

Unfortunately, among the total quantity of excavated

sherds, only a limited number pertained to the rims of pots.

Evidently the levelling of the Iron Age pits had also se­

verely truncated the pots, whereas the Archaic occupational

layers were severely damaged by modern ploughing. For

418 Marianne Maaskant-Kleibrink and Peter Atfema

Table 1. The chronology of the main features excavated by Groningen University at Satricum.

Hut feature no. 14C calibrated Pottery dates

GR 1 825-775

GR2 800/750 800-750

GR 3 900-850 750-725

GR4 750-725

GR6 844-768 750-725

RP2+4 750-725

GR 7 8 32-760 725-650

GR5 1100- 1000 700-650

Timber house AA 7 90-676 650-600

Destruction layer 010 650-600

Destruction EI 0 650-600

Court yard-house A 600-550

the publications Satricum l and l I, we selected the sherds

that could be reconstructed into pots, i.e. rim, handle and

base sherds, while the rest of the pottery, mainly wall

sherds, were put away in the Soprintendenza's storerooms

at Tivoli. However, when the GIA archaeologists of the

Pontine Region Project started to look at the Satricum pot­

tery with its stratigl'aphical provenance, in order to date

more accurately the sherd seriations collected during inten­

sive site surveys neal' Cisterna di Latina, Caracupa/Valvi­

sciolo and the Contrada Casali, as weIl as during catchment

surveys in the territories of Lanuvio, Segni and Sezze, our

Lazio pottery project was bom (Attema 1993, vol. lI; At­

tema 2000). While comparing the excavation material with

the survey material-which contains even fewer rims-we

realised that an enormous amount of excavated sherds had

been pl'ocessed but not used, because no vessels could be re­

constructed from them, and that these amounts might be put

to better use. Together with the survey archaeologists, we

then decided to use the fabrics and morphological aspects of

the sherds as diagnostic criteria, in order to discern pottery

fabrics and eventually attribute the material to chronologi­

cally arranged, pottery-ware groups (cf. Adams & Adams

1991).

The research programme came to include two different

analytical studies: (1) the fabric analysis, a study of the

clays and their inclusions of the most abundantly present

pottery, and (2) the ware analysis, a study of the most prom­

inent wares th at can be detected from the types, colours,

decorations and finish of the vessels.

Short explanation of the fabric analysis

The pottery fragments collected during the Lanuvium sur­

vey of the Pontine Region Project, to be discussed below (Figs. 4, 5 and 6) could be divided into three chronological groups (fabric families) by their colours, which remain

when fired at high temperatures: (1) red firing clays, (2) orange firing clays, and (3) pale firing clays. In the Lanu­vium survey, the red firing fabric family consisted, for ex­ample, of 48.5% of the sherd material, the orange firing

ware of 13% and the pale firing ware of 38.5% (Attema 2000). From the study of the thousands of pottery frag­

ments, it further appeared that all the clay pastes in southern

Latial period L. Ferriere period

IIB Phase I

IIB/ III (early) Late I

III (late) Late I

m (late) Late I

m (late) Late I

m (late) Late I

IVA IIA

IVA IIA

Late IV A, early IVB IIB

IVB

IVB

Archaic period

Lazio from the Bronze Age to far into the Roman Republi­

can period contained either dominant vo1canic, FeMn, au­

gite or quartz/feldspar inclusions, which in some cases seem

to have been deliberately added as a temper. Totally depu­

rated fabrics on any scale occur only from the 5th century

B.C. onwards. The red firing, fabric family could be divided

into four different groups on the basis of inclusions: (1)

FeMn predominant, (2) augite predominant, (3) lava/tufa

predominant and (4) quartz/feldspar predominant groups.

The sOl·ting and particle size of the inclusions were used as

fUl'ther divisional criteria. For the codes of fabric descrip­

tion, we refer the reader to Fig. 4.

Short explanation of the ware analysis

The GIA ware analysis hinges on the description of the total

morphology of the pots, sa to say, on their Gestalt: the col­

our and the texture of the clay are important; they are, of

course, determined by the fabrics and the firing procedures.

The presence or absence of 2. burnish or slip, as weil as its

colour and thickness, is important, as are the decorations,

shapes and functions of the pots.

DISCUS SION OF A NUMBER OF PROTO­HISTORIC W ARES AT SA TRI CUM

Analyses of the stratigraphically collected, Satricum sherds

demonstrated that pottery manufactured from red firing

clays are dominant from the early Iron Age to the end of the

6th century B.C. The red firing fabrics can be divided into

tlu'ee main ware families. In order to avoid confusion, we

have labelled these main wares according to the system

published by the Italian archaeologists Giovanni Colonna

and Paolo Carafa (Colonna 1964, 4-11; Colonna 1988; Ca­

rafa 1995, 18f.). The main ware families at Satricum are:

I. Brown impasto wares (in Italian impasto bruno). In his catalogue of the brown impasto wares found recently

on the northern slope of the Palatine Hill in Rome, Carafa

describes this pottery class as manufactured either by hand

Pottery technology and the question of pre-urban and early urban transformations

colour: roman numeral

I = red firing II = orange firing III = pale firing

predominance of a particular inclusion or combinations of inclusions: capita I letter

Minerals-rack fragments

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N o p

quartz flint quartzite feldspar augite olivine mica (biotite) leucite tuff with leucite incl. tuff lava volcanic glass limestone/calcite shale granite rock fragments

ather inclusions

Q FeMn (concretions and patches)

R grog(crushed poUery) S extreme red grog T white powdery incl. U organlc inclusions

sorting of the inclusions: ws /ms/ ps/vps

ws = weil sorted

ms = moderately sorted

ps = poorly sorted

vps = very poorly sorted

particle size: (1) (2) (3) (4)

(1) >1000 (big)

(2) 250-1000 (average)

(3) (4)

90-250 <90

(fine, still visible with the naked eye)

(absent or not visible with the naked eye)

percentage of inclusions:

D .. .. , ·

wl·j ,. ' . smal/letter

. � '- ' . . .� . ' .. ' --

1% 15% 40% a > 20%

i� b 10-20% D • • r

c 5-10% 2% 20% 50%

D i= d <5% • I , . . .

0 . · . •

5% 25% 70%

-, . .

" ' .. .. . - ,

0' " .

10% 35%

Fig. 4. GIA fabric analysis, codes and diagrams.

419

or on the potter's wheel and produced from clays of reason­

ably good quality, which were fired to brown (Munsell

7.5YR 4/4) or black (Munsell 2.5YR 2.5/0) surface colours

(Carafa 1995, 18f.). Carafa's analysis of this pottery, dating

from the last qUaIter of the 8th century to c. 500 B.C. (the

Orientalising and Archaic periods), demonstrates that the

brown impasto wares gradually diminished over time: at the

end of the 8th century B.C. c. 1130 sherds of this c1ass were

present, in the first quarter of the 7th century c. 500 sherds,

in the second quatter of that century 240 sherds, and in the

third qUaIter 400 sherds. In the fourth quarter, something

special must have happened, because the number of frag­

ments of brown impasto ware suddenly increases to c. 1000.

While the first half of the 6th century still shows 850 sherds,

af ter that period the amount rapidly diminishes to less than

100 fragments (Carafa 1995, table on p. 258). From the

table on p. 257, it is evident th at the larger part of the brown

impasto ware in use during the Orientalising period on the

420 Marianne Maaskant-Kleibrink and Peter Attema

Palatine comprised jars (500 fragments), lids or lidded

bowls (c. 100 sherds) and cups/chalices (c. 450 sherds) (Ca­

rafa 1995,258).

At Satricum the closed contexts of the 9th-8th-century

features cut into the soil-Iron Age hut pits, rubbish pits

and trenches-mostly contained brown impasto ware. Al­

though Colonna and Carafa proposed not to split up the im­

pasto bruno further, we divided it according to fabric and

finish into four, different, brown wares, in order to be able

to use these wares for a finer chronology.

(1) Well-burnished brown impasto ware (WWB). This con­

tains lustrously burnished vessels, which have a silky sheen.

The paste that these pots are made of must have originated

from relatively pure, clay beds, because all the fabrics are

well- to medium-sOl'ted and no single type of mineral inclu­

sion is predominant, although occasionally a few large in­

clusions occur, mostly FeMn nodules. The surface burnish­

ing is soapy or silky and sticks to the sherd. When broken,

the burnished skin always has a sharper break than the inter­

nal part of the sherd. The burnishing of these relatively pure

clays was evidently easier and more successful than with

com'ser clays containing more inclusions. The brown col­

ours of the pots vary enormously in gradation, even in a

single specimen. This is a clear indication of open firing. In

the Satricum features, especially amphorae, jugs, large

bowls and stands were made of well-burnished, brown

ware. Chronologically, the well-burnished pots are perhaps

not the first to appear; the ones in the next c1ass are usually

older.

(2) Commo17, brmvn, burnished impasto (CBB). This is the

second, brown, impasto class present in the cut-out features

at Satricum. lts fabrics contain more inclusions and of vari­

ous kinds: tufa, lava, grog, and FeMn. The burnishing of the

pots was far less successful, often resulting in a thin skin,

which is of ten crackled. The group must originally have

differed from the well-burnished wares, because the sherds

underwent the same post-depositional processes but have

reacted differently. The firing of these pots is also uneven.

This ware group seems to contain especially many jars: they

were made by hand and demonstrate a sharp, intern al ridge at the transition from lip to neck (in ltalian spigolo interno).

In many of the fabrics, quartz or feldspar inclusions are

present, which may have been deliberately added to the clay

by the potters, since a high percentage of quartz would

increase the thermal shock resistance considerably and

most of the pots would have been manufactured as cooking

pots.

(3) Common (sandy) brown 'vvare (CSB). This ware is char­

acterized by fine-to-medium-sorted, sandy clay fabrics. The

surfaces are hardly treated; only a slight smoothing with the

hands or sticks can be detected. This ware was of ten used in

manufacturing larger shapes, such as the dolium or other

large jars, and shapes used for cooking, such as medium­

sized jars, bowls, etc. Because of the fairly rough skin, it is

not always clear whether the firing is uneven or more even

in these larger pots.

(4) Blaek-slip ware (BS). In the features databie to the later

8th and the full 7th centuries B.C., sherds occur that aïe

covered with a thick 'slip', either black, dark grey or grey­

ish-brown in colour. This ware is easily recognised by its

silky, black gloss and the sharp contrast between the dark

skin and its reddish, fairly sandy fabric underneath. The

contrast between the glossy surface and the clay matrix un­

derneath is so extreme that the surface in most cases will

presumably be a slip, although such glossy surfaces may

also have been obtained by burnishing only. Black-slip ware

is characteristic of carinated cups, kantharoi, amphorae, etc.

The sherds are nearly always thin, the firing is mostly even.

The ware starts at the end of the 8th century B.C. and con­

tinues far into the Orientalising period.

From the end of the 8th century B.C. and during the 7th cen­

tury B.C., the brown impasto wares were increasingly re­

placed by various, red, impasto wares.

11. Red impasto wares (cf. Italian impasto rosso)

On the basis of their fabric and appearance, the red impasto

ware can also be subdivided into several different wares.

The fine red ware is mostly manufactured on the potter's

wheel and from a well-depurated clay; the slip is usually

bright red (Munsell 2.5YR 4/8) (Carafa 1995, 91f.). As is

weIl known, the red ware made in central Italy was origi­

nally copied from imported Phoenician pottery and used, to­

gether with new eating and drinking habits, especially at

banquets. Consequently, a set of new pottery types was de­

veloped in this ware, and new technology was introduced as

weIl (the fast wheel). The results of the Palatine excavations

demonstrate that, af ter the Orientalising period had come to

an end, the quality of the red-slip pottery decreased mark­

edly, as was also noted in the excavations at Lavinium and

Castel di Decima. In the Palatine excavations, the peak of

the red slip is dated from the end of the 7th to the middle of

the 6th century B.C. In the first period, it is present with c.

100 sherds, which increase to c. 170 just aftel' the middle of

the 7th century B.C. A further increase to c. 500 fragments

occurred during the period 625-550 B.C. (Carafa 1995,

table on p. 258). As everywhere else, on the Palatine, the

red-slip ware consists mainly of jars (666 fragments, mainly

of globular form) and plates (122 fragments) and consider­

ably fewer oinochoai (57 fragments) (Carafa 1995, table on

p. 258). For the purpose of the analysis of the Satricum

ware, here, only a f�w subdivisions will suffice:

(1) Fine red-slip ware (impasto rosso) (FRS). Though in its

early stage for the most part probably still formed by hand,

this pottery was usually made on a fast wheel. It is of ten

made of a buff-coloured, well-sorted, sandy clay, covered

with a red slip, which in colour contrasts so much with the

paste that it looks as if it were painted. The fabrics of the

wheel-thrown pots, in southern Lazio at least, are in this pe­

riod of ten lava- or tufa-dominant, while another group is

augite-dominant. The technology in the various workshops

evidently differed. Large shapes, such as bowls, plates,

Pottery technology and the question of pre-urban and early urban transformations 421

globular jars with long, everted lips and halmai, were manu­factured in this fine red ware.

(2) A ware contrasting sharply with the fine red-slip ware is

the camman red-slzjJ ware (CRS): this pottery is of ten, al­

though not exclusiveïy, made on the wheel. It is a relatively

thin-walled, coarse pottery covered with a soapy red slip

that easily rubs off. This category in Satricum is exclusively

represented by small jars, almost the size of mugs, as well

as by plates and bowls. The paste of ten contains FeMn

nodules. It is a traditional ware, simply replacing the brown

burnish with a red one, and was perhaps still home-made. A

coarser variant of this ware was used to produce dolia, of

large, globular shapes, bearing the same soapy red slip that

easily rubs off.

Another widely diffused ware in the Orientalising features

is the grey-slip ware (GS). It is a thin, wheel-made product,

highly porous and stained with organic material. It has a

grey core and is flaky. The sherds contain band handles,

bases and rims of drinking cups of Orientalising types. It

has a thin, greyish-black slip. It seems to imitate some types

of pots known also among the bucchero drinking ware. This

grey-slip ware seems to be a variant of the Orientalising,

black-slip plates and bowls.

At Satricum, the transformation from brown to red wares is

a relatively clear phenomenon: the features either contain

predominantly brown, impasto wares or predominantly red,

blackish-brown-slip impasto wares or derivatives of these

classes (see Table 2). A difference between the system pro­

posed by Carafa (Carafa 1995) and the GIA pottery project

is that we organised the black and brown, glossy products of

the Orientalising periods under separate headings (WBB,

CBB and BS waresS), whereas Carafa maintains the label

impasta bruna.

A very good reason for applying different labels is that,

by differentiating black or brown-slip impasto from the ear­

lier brown impasto, we dispose of a chronological criterion.

One of the main points of discussion in the near future will

be the kind of finish used by the potters in the various peri­

ods: we noted a marked difference between the finishing of

the brown impasto ware of the first centuries of production

(9th-8th centuries B.C.) and the 'slip' finish in use during

the third qUaIter of the 8th and the greater part of the 7th

centuries B.C. (the period of the Palatine analysis), when

many new shapes belonging to drinking sets were made in

either brown-black- or red-slip ware. As already mentioned,

many jars, kantharoi and cups demonstrate a very lustrous,

black or brown skin, which, for the moment, we define as a

'slip', although it is not certain that these lustrous surfaces

are always the result of a slip and not in some cases actually

caused by burnishing. The question also involves the red­

slip pottery produced in the same period.

111. Coarse wares (COA)

A second, major development in pottery technology, the in­

troduction of coarse pottery, also occurred during the Orien-

5 We have opted for the term 'slip', even though, pending the tech­nological research, we are not sure yet that the glossy skin on the pots actually is a slip and was not caused by extreme burnishing. This also holds for the Iron Age, red-slip wares (FRS and CRS wares), where the term 'slip' in many cases may actually not indi­cate slipped pots but burnished ones.

Table 2. The main ware families in the pottery of southern Lazio. An x stands for the presence of 5 sherds of a special ware group in the fea­tures published in Satricum land Satricum IT.

Features

Hut pit GR 1

Hut pit GR 2a

Hut pit 2b

Hut pit 4a + b

Hut pit 3a and grey layer

Hut pit 6

Hut pit 7 a

Hut pit 7 b

Activity area 7 c

Hut pit Sa

Rubbish pits 3 and 5

Timber house AA

Courtyard-house A in DlO Court yard-house in ElO

CBB

xxx x

xxxxxxx

xx

x

x

xxx

x

CSB WBB

xxxxx x

xxxxxxxx xx

xxxx xx

xxx

x

x

BSW RS CRS COA

xxx xxxx

xxxx xx

xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx

xx x x

xxx xxx xxxx x

xxx xx x x

xxxxxxxx xxxx x

xxx xxx xxx x x

xxxx xxxx xxxxx xx

x? xx xxxxx

xx xxx xxxxxxx

422 Marianne Maaskant-Kleibrink and Peter Attema

talising period, but the production of coat'se wares had its

peak only dUl'ing the Archaic period, the 6th century B.C.

Carafa notes that this pottery cIass is al ways made on a fast

wheel and seldom demonstrates a surface treatment (Carafa

1995, 126f.). He points to the first appearance of coarse

ware, which consists of a group of cylindrical jars at the end

of the 8th century B.C., a date confirmed by Gjerstad's dis­

covery of fragments of this ware in the lowest strata of the

Equus Domitiani excavation on the Roman Forum (the so­

called grezzo ware, now lost). Carafa offers as an explana­

tion for the production of coarse ware during the 7th century

B.C., which shows many badly shaped and very coarse

products, that these may still have been regarded as house­

hold products (Carafa 1995, 127). On the Palatine, the cIass

of the coat'se wares starts at the end of the 8th century B.C.

with 5 sherds, amounting to c. 200 sherds in the first three

quarters of the 7th century B.C., increasing around 600 B.C.

to c. 1000 sherds and af ter that increasing still further to c.

2500 fragments. Af ter 550 B.C., the number fluctuates from

500 to 7000 during the various periods (Carafa 1995, table

on p. 258). The pottery cIass mainly comprises jars (2323

fragments), lids or lidded bowls (327 fragments) and basins

(300 fragments) (Carafa 1995, table on p. 258).

At Satricum, the coarse ware has helped considerably in

dating the excavated features. The stratigraphical sherd ma­

terial from the courtyard-buildings, especially Building A,

contained httle impasto material, either brown or red, but

contained a high percentage of grezzo pots made on the fast

wheel. This pottery ware belongs to a third ware family, th at

of the coarse wares, which followed on the red impasto

wares and which is consequently of great importance for the

chronology. It is made of a red firing, fairly coarse paste. At

Satricum, it has augite as the predominant incIusion. The

coat'se-ware cIays do not contain large incIusions-since

these would have cut the potters' hands on the wheel-and

appear as moderately weIl to well-sOlted. In the Archaic pe­

riod, the number of pottery types decreases considerably;

the instrumentum domesticum now predominantly consists

of simple jars, bowls, trays and cups, mostly with everted

and slightly thickened rims. Roof tiles and dolia belong to

the same cIass as the coat'se-ware pots, although they con­

tain more large-size incIusions of different minerais, not be­

ing made on the wheel.

CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE W ARES AND THE STRA TIGRAPHY

At Satricum, the transformation from the brown impasto

wares to the red-slip impasto wares, accompanied by vari­

ous, different, finer, black- and grey-slip pots of the drink­

ing and eating sets, seems almost too cIear. The Iron Age

features cut into the virgin soil mostly contained brown im­

pasto wares; the Orientalising features, incIuding the burnt

destruction layer, contained mainly red impasto wares, the

destruction level of court yard-building A in square ElO

contained predominantly coarse wares (see Table 2). From the pottery analysis, it appears that the introduction

of the red impasto wares came hand in hand with many

other changes. The first roof tiles on the site, for in stance,

were found in contexts having red impasto ware, sparse

bucchero fragments (mostly of chaliceslkantharoi types)

and the fiJ'st, depurated, figulina, imported cups. Of building

AA, which contained all the above-described Orientalising

wares, the collapsed walls were moved in later times. Of the

plan, only the cut-out, wall trenches of apsidal form re­

mained, while in what would have been a long and fairly

narrow wing, ÏJ"on slag was found in cIosed, Orientalising

contexts. Nearby, metal objects of high quality from a de­

posit (perhaps a grave) were found. At Murlo, the long wing

of one of the buildings also functioned as a workshop,

where high-quality products were made-a necessity in a

redistribution system under the con trol of an aristocracy or

priests (Nijboer 1998).

THE REGIONAL PERSPECTIVE AND THE FABRIC ANALYSIS OF THE LANUVIUM SURVEY POTTERY

In the rural catchment of ancient Lanuvium in the Alban

hills near Rome, about 10,000 pottery and tile fragments

were collected by the Pontine Region Project from various

sample areas.6 On the basis of the settlement history of an­

cient Lanuvium, its rural territory could be expected to yield

a continuo us sequence of pottery production from the ear­

lier Latin occupation weIl into the Roman period. From the

Lanuvium survey programme it became clear that the

brown impasto wares with their red firing fabrics, with

either a fairly pure or a deliberately more sandy matrix,

point to a clear Latin occupation of the landscape, adv anc­

ing from the Alban hills as the core area and halting arOLmd

the main crater at Lanuvio. However, the common red

wares found in the survey indicate that the later phase of the

7th century B.C. saw the first infill of the hilly landscape,

when individu al families or small communities started to

exploit the wider countryside (Figs. 5 and 6). This pottery

points to either a spontaneous or a transformation which

may perhaps be linked with an Etruscan-Roman occupation

of the landscape, and advancing from Rome as the core

area.

From the stratigraphically collected, excavation material

at Satricum, it has become clear that more intensive use of

the settiement hill occurred during settlement phase IIA

(725-650 B.C.): pit,s GR 5, 7a, and 7b, pit 3, as weIl as VG

2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 11 and 13, were filled up in this period, while

pits 5 and 7 give us examples of occupation in this period.

Oval hut 7 was built with wattle-and-daub walls erected in

6 The Lanuvium survey is part of the research program me 'Roman Colonisation South of Rome', a comparative survey of three early Romanised landscapes th at was carried out by the second author in the period 1994-97 and was funded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. It comprised surveys in the rural catchments of three Roman towns, two of them veritable colonies (Signia and Setia) and the third (Lanuvium), discussed here, a mu­nicipium.

•

Pottery technology and the question of pre-urban and early urban transformations 423

Fig. S. One of the sample areas of the Pontine Region Project in the catchment of ancient Lanuvium.

wall trenches and probably contained a rubbish pit in its

centre, but activities in this hut were carried out above

ground. The successol' to hut 7, building AA, must have

been much larger than the previous huts, containing work­

shop activities, and was partly covered with tiles. It con­

tained well-finished black- sl ip kantharo i and carinated

cups, as weil as red-slip jars and holmoi (Beijer 1991,

63ff.) , but also common red-slip jars and storage jars. The

common red-slip ware, together with the bucchero kantha­

ros/chalice sherds, signifies the second stage of the Orien­

talising building development in the settlement. At Satri­

cum, it saw the construction of the wooden, shed-like build­

ing AA, constructed immediately on the ground, which is a

c1ear change from the earlier, semi-interred floors and wall

trenches. From the link provided by the common red-slip

ware occurring in areas in the h ills around Lanuvium, as

weU as in building AA at Satricum, we may sUl'mise that,

around the fi r'st, proto-urban centres of southem Lazio,

wooden sheds, possibly in the shape of the Satricum AA,

were erected to make better use of the surrounding country.

The roof til es of AA are very thin and covered only a

small stretch of the building, while, in the Lanuvium survey

material, hardly any roof material was recorded for this pe­

riod. It is only in the following period, which at Satricum

saw the erection of the great court yard-houses A, B and C

with tiled roofs, that roofing material appears in the coun­

tryside, as the Lanuvium survey and other surveys of the

Pontine Region Project have demonstrated. This technologi­

cal development, which is linked up with the court yard­

buildings and the coarse wares, is historically still difficult

to grasp; the production of tiles and pots, and building plans

in the early 6th century B.C. reached a high degree of stand­

ardisation, which means that urban workshops must have

250m

Iron age

Archaic period

Roman

been functioning (Nijboer 1998). They produced their

coarse wares according to fixed standards, while drinking

cups and finer jars were imported or made in workshops

whose craftsmen knew the technology for depurated c1ay

productions. Perhaps this 'urban transformation ' also ad­

vanced from Rome as a core area.

The next development in southern Lazio is, l ike the ear­

lier ones, again most apparent from the excavated and the

survey material; it consists of pale and orange ware dating

from the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. At Satricum it was so

far not present in any of the dwellings on the Poggio delle

Ferriere excavated by Groningen University, as it appeared

only sporadicaUy in the ploughed topsoil and thus could not

be processed and connected with an occupational phase.

However, the ware is very weU known from the large Vo­

tive Deposit II (Bouma 1996), as weU as from two ne­

cropoli, one on the Poggio delle FelTiere (Satricum 1I, 101ff.; Bouma 1996) and the other in the Macchia S. Lucia

(Gnade et al. 1992) and from fields on the margins of the

Archaic site (Nijboer et al. 1 995). The three areas, (1) the

Poggio deUe Ferriere, (2) the Macchia Santa Lucia and (3)

the Macchia Bottacci, each with its own tempIe, necropolis

and living quarters, indicate that by the 5th century B.C. the

settiement had become nuc1eated (Maaskant-Kleibrink

1997, 139ff.).

From the Lanuvium survey, it is evident that, when the

6th century B.C. was weIl advanced, the early, agricultural­

colonization pattern had already developed into a rural­

settiement h ierarchy that was dependent on Lanuvium as its

central place. The survey showed that the Archaic and post­

Archaic exploitation of the catchment of Lanuvium, ap­

proximately in the period between the 6th and the early 4th

centuries B,C., of ten featured more than one production unit

424 Marianne Maaskant-Kleibrink and Peter Attema

RED FIRING FABRICS

non dominant

FeMn dominant

lava/tuff dominant

augite dominant

quartz/feldspar dominant

ORANGE FIRING FABRICS

augite dominant

q uartz/feldspar/ augi te

quartz/feldspar dominant

PALE FIRING FABRICS

augite dominant

quartz/feldspar dominant

lava dominant

depurated/large inc1usions

< 1 00

C/J (1) � ro :s s:: :s 0 � .D (1)

"'t:I ro a "'t:I t:: ro

....t::

between 1 00 and 500

5 00- 1 000

(1) � ro :s

� ü ro

:D "'t:I (1)

....t:: C/J

' § ;::::l .D

� Q) :s

(1) � ro :s

"'t:I (1) (1) � P- ro (1)

, e- (1) :s � � � ro

0 ro (1) :s C/J :s C/J "'t:I � C/J (1) 0 (1) ro � (1) 0 C/J � C/J �

B t:: I-< Ü ro 0 ro (1) 0

C/J a 0 bJ) ü ro ü t:: (1) P- a "'t:I ro "@ , 9 0 (1) �

ü � 0 P-

• 1 000-2000

C/J t:: 0

' e;; C/J ;::::l (1) ü � , S ro :s (1) (1) bJ) bJ)

� !:! t::

ro -B � 0 ' � s:: ro C/J a (1)

� 0 ro

� :s C/J t:: � "'t:I

0 (1)

a ....... � a ro �

> ;::::l 0 !:! P-ü (1)

"'t:I

R OMAN REP UBLICAN

DIAGRAM S HOWING THE RELATION BETWEEN NON DEPURATED LOCAL FABRICS AND WARES IN THE LANUVIUM SURVEY

Fig, 6 , Fabric and ware diagram from the Lanuvium survey,

Pottery technology and the question of pre-urban and early urban transformations 425

on each hilI sUlTounding Lanuvium. In this period, the ce­

ram ic scatters still lack the massive stone-building debris

that characterizes the later, Roman, farmstead scatters. The

impression is that between the .6th and the 5th-4th centuries

we are in most cases dealing with very modest farmsteads

having wattle-and-daub walls, possibly resting on tufa

soc1es and having a (partly) tiled roof. Fragments of storage

jars found in most scatters support their interpretation as

fannsteads. In the course of the Republican period, i .e. ap­

proximately from the late 4th century B.C. onwards, stone

structures appeared, sometimes built on free-standing stone

platforms. These were placed centrally on the hilltops domi­

nating the AJchaic rural landscape. This agricultural-exploi­

tation system with strategicall y placed ' villa farms', is

found in large parts of southern Lazio from, at its earliest,

the advanced 4th century B.C. onwards. The phenomenon

was detected both in the Sezze survey (PRP 1994), and in

the Segni survey (PRP 1997), as well as in the surveys car­

ried out along the slopes of Monti Lepini (PRP 1995). The

latter surveys were all carried out in the territories of the

colonies founded by the Romans in the 4th century B.C. in

the Lepine mountains. This exploitation model is character­

istic of the advanced period of Roman agricultural coloniza­

tion and is at least partially bound up with agricultural spe­

cialization (Attema et al. , 1999). This phase seems to be

largely absent at Satricum, meaning that the site must have

lapsed into a more marginal existence.

Marianne Maaskant-Kleibrink and Peter Attema

Groningen Institute of Archaeology Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Faculteit der Lettern Postraat 6 NL-9712 ER GRONINGEN

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