2020. With Annet Nieuwhof. Chapter 6. Merovingian pottery at Wijnaldum in context. In: A. Nieuwhof (ed): Excavations at Wijnaldum Volume 2: Handmade and Wheel-thrown Pottery of the first Millennium AD , p.147-157 (original) (raw)

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

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.