Ancient Technology

Two metallurgical traditions coexisted in the Chalcolithic Southern Levant: the lost wax casting of polymetallic alloys and the pure copper technology. Details of their operational sequences are still unknown. To date, no production sites of lost wax casting technology have been found. Only the main steps of the pure copper technology can be reconstructed from the archaeological record...

Introduction

Studies related to the craft of the potter whether it is the examination of manufacturing techniques of ancient Greek vases or clay analyses, have considerably developed over the last decades. Yet, experimental reconstructions and potter-centred analyses have mostly focused on Bronze Age pottery, Early Iron Age pottery, coarse wares, or kitchen wares (Knappett, 1999; Müller, Kilikoglou and Day, 2015; Choleva, 2020; Choleva, Jung and Kardamaki, 2020).

An abundance of past research has addressed Iron Age pottery in the Iberian Peninsula since the beginning of archaeological analysis in Spain. However, it has mainly focused on examining historical-cultural aspects linked to specific chronologies and typologies. It is only rarely that studies have been concerned with production processes. Ethnography has traditionally been used to make direct ...