Pottery technologies of Attingitoi (drinking vessels) from the Iron Age site of Monte Iato (Western Sicily)

a multi-analytical approach using µCT, SANS and experimental archaeology

Abstract: 

This project aims to investigate the primary forming techniques of the distinctive ritual Attingitoi pottery drinking vessels from the important cult site of Monte Iato (Sicily) during the early Iron Age (7th-5th century BC), using non-destructive X-ray microtomography (µ-CT), small-angle neutron scattering (SANS), and experimental archaeology. It will examine if and how growing regional contacts between archaic Sicily and the wider Mediterranean world affected local pottery manufacturing traditions and, in particular, whether such contacts led to the formation of new technological and cultural practices and choices, like the use of the fast-potter’s wheel. While consistency and continuity in forming techniques through the Iron Age would testify to a maintenance of local modes of production and thus traditional learning networks, discontinuity could indicate a rupture possibly caused by the supra-regional transfer of new know-how in the context of contact experiences.

The project will also provide an archaeological case study for the further development and practical demonstration of two new non-destructive analytical methodologies for the investigation of pottery forming techniques using established material science techniques, µ-CT and SANS, along with experimental archaeology. Together, these analytical techniques will provide quantitative data on the orientation of nano- to millimetre sized particles and voids within both fine- and coarsetextured pottery fabrics, from which categories of different forming techniques may then be inferred. Such quantitative data, and statistical interrogation that it enables, has previously been impossible (in the case of fine-fabrics) or required extensive destructive sampling (i.e. thin sections of coarse-fabrics). The demonstration of the non-destructive analytical methodologies employed in this project will therefore have significant implications for the wider study of archaeological pottery.