Lecture Summaries:  10 April, 2002

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PUTTING POTS IN THEIR PLACE:  ASPECTS OF THE TRADE IN AEGEAN CERAMICS IN THE EAST MEDITERRANEAN
by
Sue Sherratt
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

      Pottery of Aegean manufacture was traded in the eastern Mediterranean from the early second millennium BC onwards.  Though at different times between then and the early first millennium, different regions of the Aegean acted as the chief centres of production for this trade, other aspects of it remained remarkably consistent: in particular, the extent to which pots were traded for their own sake as pots, and the degree to which production specifically designed for eastern Mediterranean markets. Both of these suggest that a trade in Aegean pottery was of considerable economic significance both to the producers and to the transporters and distributors of such pottery.  This is the more interesting in view of the absence of any evidence that pottery itself was regarded as a valuable or prestigious commodity.
      In this lecture, an attempt is made to trace the history of the Aegean pottery trade in the eastern Mediterranean over the course of a millennium, addressing such questions as its scale at different times, the locations and motivations of producing centres, the identities of carriers and traders, the nature of consuming markets and what it was about Aegean pottery that appealed to them.  The wider implications of this trade, particularly the trading mechanisms involved and the effects of these on economic and political strategies, are also examined.