2020. With Annet Nieuwhof. Chapter 2. Introduction to the pottery research of Wijnaldum Tjitsma. In: A. Nieuwhof (ed): Excavations at Wijnaldum Volume 2: Handmade and Wheel-thrown Pottery of the first Millennium AD , p.41-46 (original) (raw)

2020, The Excavations at Wijnaldum Volume 2: Handmade and Wheel-thrown Pottery of the first Millennium AD,

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.