The Excavations at Wijnaldum Volume 2: Handmade and Wheel-thrown Pottery of the first Millennium AD (original) (raw)
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The Excavations at Wijnaldum Volume 2: Handmade and Wheel-thrown Pottery of the first Millennium AD, , 2020
During the three summer campaigns of fieldwork at Wijnaldum in 1991, 1992 and 1993, most of the material remains that were found during the excavation were processed (cleaned and split into material categories) by a large group of volunteers. This publication is a very late recognition of their painstaking work. Thanks to their efforts, specialists could start with the analysis of the huge amount of find material immediately after the excavation ended. Priority was given to the identification and dating of pottery types, because that information (providing termini ante and post quem) was needed for establishing the chronology and phasing of the settlement, and continuity or discontinuity in habitation. Pottery dates combined with the stratigraphy of the features resulted in the chronology of the settlement of Wijnaldum-Tjitsma that was presented in Volume 1 of “The excavations at Wijnaldum“.1 All the pottery was analysed during the years between the end of the fieldwork and the beginning of 1996 (Figure 2.1). Ernst Taayke was responsible for the handmade pottery of the Roman Iron Age, so-called ‘terp ware’, for the pottery of the of the 5th and 6th centuries also known as Anglo-Saxon-style pottery, and for the grass-tempered2 ovoid pots, so-called Tritsum ware. Danny Gerrets and Jan de Koning analysed the pottery of the Early Middle Ages: the ovoid pots with grit temper, also known as Hessens-Schortens ware4 or (in Germany), weiche Grauware; the globular pots of the later Early Middle Ages; and imported, wheel-thrown pottery, starting with coarse-ware late-Roman-type pottery; and ending somewhere in the 10th century with Pingsdorf-type pottery. Some chapters on relatively small categories were already published in the first volume: terra sigillata by Tineke Volkers and Roman wheel-thrown pottery by Marjan Galestin.The large majority of the pottery that played an important role in the chronology, however, still awaited publication in the second volume. After a delay of more than twenty years after the appearance of Volume 1, it is finally presented in this book.
The Excavations at Wijnaldum Volume 2: Handmade and Wheel-thrown Pottery of the first Millennium AD., 2020
This chapter discusses a number of contexts with large amounts of pottery from the Merovingian period. This period saw the use and production of pottery at Wijnaldum undergoing a remarkable development. While household pottery formerly was homemade for a household’s own use, imported pottery from the Rhineland becomes the most numerous in this period, to decline again towards the Carolingian period. In habitation Period IV1 (AD 550-650) a striking 63.7% of the pottery assemblage at Wijnaldum consists of wheel-thrown Merovingian coarse ware.2 At the same time, handmade pottery was still being produced, but the previous, beautifully finished, decorated and undecorated pottery of the 5th century (types A1 and A2 described by Taayke in Chapter 4) is replaced by much coarser handmade ware: the types A3 and A4, which come in two variants: grass- or chaff-tempered ware (Tritsum ware), and grit-tempered ware (Hessens-Schortens ware). Not only do these types tend to be less well-finished than before, but also their shapes become rather squat, actually not unlike the shapes of the Merovingian imported pots. From then on, these ovoid, barrel-, or bucket-shaped pots evolve into one of the most notable export products of the coastal Frisians, the completely globular pot or Kugeltopf. In habitation period V (AD 650-750), the percentage of imported pottery sees a dramatic decline, dropping to just 1.2% of the ceramic assemblage. The reasons behind the decline are not entirely clear. Period IV coincides with the heyday of Wijnaldum and its surroundings as the centre of a regional kingdom that probably encompassed the present provinces of Friesland and Groningen. The import of Merovingian pottery decreased well before Friesland was annexed by the Franks in 734; still, imported glass vessels from this period at Wijnaldum show that the exchange of goods with the Frankish world had not come to a standstill, despite possibly less-than-friendly relations during the period of the Frankish conquest. Period IV is also the ‘Golden Age’ of the northern Netherlands, with a large number of gold objects.6 The famous Wijnaldum brooch is the most striking example of this gold horizon (see also Chapter 1). The peak in the im-portation of Frankish pottery coincides with this Golden Age. Just like gold objects, imported pottery seems to concentrate at Wijnaldum and in northern Westergo, and from there seems to have been distributed in stages from this centre to the periphery of this regional kingdom. This explains the concentrations of imported pottery and gold in northern Westergo, and the much occurrences of gold and of Merovingian coarse and fine wares in settlements further from it; apparently these settlements depended on the centre in northern Westergo for their imported goods. The purpose of this chapter is threefold. First, it aims at underpinning the chronology of the imported pottery presented and discussed in the previous chapter. Secondly, it investigates the proportional amounts of imported and locally made pottery. And thirdly, it discusses the start of the importation of Merovingian pottery. The contexts that were selected also give us some insight into the deposi-tional practices and processes in the Merovingian period at Wijnaldum. They are presented in chronological order.
A. Nieuwhof, E. Knol & H. van de Velde (eds): Making Places, Making Lives. Landscape and Settlement in Coastal Wetlands. Proceedings of the 72nd Sachsensymposium In Castricum-Alkmaar, 2024
This paper discusses the ceramic development in the north-western part of early medieval Frisia, nowadays the province of North-Holland (Noord-Holland) in the Netherlands. The early 1990s saw the start of an ambitious research projectfocusing on early medieval Frisia: the so-called Frisia-project of the universities of Amsterdam and Groningen. Its main aim was to disclose the archeological information on three areas of early medieval Frisia, notably in three coastal provinces of theNetherlands: Friesland, North-Holland and South-Holland. The studies on Friesland and South-Holland were published in two PhD theses (Gerrets 2010; Dijkstra 2011). For various reasons this did not happen for North-Holland. This gap has recently been filled with the publication covering North-Holland in the first millennium (Nicolay and Van Eerden 2023), including data and chapters by this author. The present paper evaluates our knowledge of the developments in medieval pottery, which corresponds to a chapter in this book. Although the discussion focuses on provenance and typology of the pottery, the higher purpose is to assess the migratory movements of the people who used the pots.
The Excavations at Wijnaldum Volume 2: Handmade and Wheel-thrown Pottery of the first Millennium AD., 2020
Handmade, probably locally produced pottery from the Merovingian and Carolingian periods is by far the largest group within the total body of pottery from the excavation of Wijnaldum-Tjitsma. This pottery makes up 45.1% of the total number of fragments and 26.8% of the total weight. In numbers, 32,197 fragments are attributed to this group, weighing over 210 kg.1 From these figures it can be inferred that this pottery was fragmented more than the handmade pottery from earlier periods. The handmade pottery of the Merovingian and Carolingian periods largely consists of Kugeltopf or globu- lar pots, and of ovoid pots with flat, lenticular or ‘wobbly’ bases. The ovoid pot belongs to the Merovingian period, and to the group of Hessens-Schortens or A3/A4 ware that was described by Taayke in Chapter 4, while globular pots occur from the Carolingian period onwards. Globular pots are thought to have developed in the coastal area of the Netherlands, where they replaced the earlier Hessens- Schortens ware in the early 8th century. Globular pots were also adopted in the coastal areas of northwestern Germany, but here they replaced the earlier types in the course of the 8th century, so slightly later than in in the Netherlands.
The Roman Pottery Kiln at Halder, North-Brabant (the Netherlands), Revisited
Xantener Berichte , 2016
The Roman site at Halder was explored by archaeologists at the Rijksdienst voor het Oudheidkundig Bodemonderzoek (ROB) around fifty years ago; this revealed a Roman pottery kiln, several wells and clay pits. Willem Willems examined the kiln and associated finds in detail, and published his results. Having developed a typo-chronology of the pottery wasters, he found that the kiln was in operation during the Flavian period, i.e. between 65 and 80 AD. Taken all the evidence for pottery production at the site into account, Willems believed that one of the clay pits comprised the raw materials used for potting activities. As a result, he concluded that the excavations represented only a small part of what would have been a fairly extensive pottery industry. Following on from this, the authors of this article re-examined the pottery assemblage, which is currently stored at the Oudheidkundig Museum Sint-Michielsgestel. Using a detailed compositional approach to ceramics, which combines thin section petrography and geochemistry, it is suggested that three more types of vessels can be assigned to Willems’ typo-chronological study. In addition, it was found that the clay from the clay pit did not match the clay used for Roman potting activities.
2023
In this contribution, settlement patterns in the coastal area of the northern Netherlands during the Merovingian and Carolingian periods are discussed. The first maps showing the distribution of Merovingian and Carolingian wheel-thrown pottery in the research area were published by E. KNOL (1993). Based on these finds and his inventory of possible and certainly inhabited sites, Knol reconstructed settlement patterns and discussed the general habitation history during the early Middle Ages. Knol‘s pottery data were supplemented by new data regarding the distribution of hand-formed and wheel-thrown pottery dating from the Merovingian period and wheel-thrown pottery from the Carolingian period. The new data was collected during field research, at the Northern Archaeological Depot and through literature review. Focusing in more detail on three geographical levels provided new insights into the habitation history. In this research, systematic field surveys proved to be a strong tool.