Romanizing Production: A study of Castro Ceramics before and after Roman Imperial Expansion in Northwestern Portugal

Summary

The Civitatis of Bagunte is a fortified hilltop settlement inhabited by the Castro Culture people from the late Bronze Age to the Roman period. Ceramic artifacts from the Iron Age and Roman periods have dominated the assemblages found at Bagunte over the last five excavation seasons. My graduate research focuses on a question of broad implications for economic anthropology and social archaeology: How does colonization affect patterns of indigenous production before and after imperial expansion, through the actions and agency of both local producers and colonizers? More specifically, addressing this question will ask how the Roman Empire promoted or hindered local production of ceramics in northwestern Portugal after Roman expansion into Iberia. Utilizing ceramics found in pre-colonized contexts and comparing them to those found in later, post-colonized contexts will identify how Roman expansion affected ceramic production at Castro sites. Specifically, I will focus on comparing indigenous pottery and Roman pottery found at sites throughout northwestern Portugal, most importantly from the Castro Culture site of Bagunte. In doing so, I will utilize macroscopic and microscopic analyses that will answer pertinent questions concerning the economy and the role of ceramic production at the Bagunte site.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes": Transitions and Thresholds throughout Central America and Beyond

Keywords

Spatial Coverage