Siculo-Norman Tableware Consumption upon Monte Bonifato: A Spatial Analysis

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

After the Norman conquest of Sicily, the newfound rulers of the island found themselves greatly outnumbered in a land where a majority of the population had converted to Islam. Under these conditions, many of the technological and artistic innovations brought to the island by the Arabs continued under the new, Christian regime. Of particular interest to archaeologists are the ceramics that remain so ubiquitous in the archaeological record of this time. This paper focuses on the spatial distribution of Siculo-Norman tableware across Monte Bonifato, Alcamo, Western Sicily. Highly decorated with colorful glazes, this ceramic type is considered characteristic of this time period, though its continued use into the Swabian era makes earlier material harder to distinguish from later developments. Nonetheless, the ornate appearance of this pottery leads most scholars to believe that only the houses of elites would have contained this material. Connecting Siculo-Norman tableware with the presence of rubble features, thought to be collapsed housing, demonstrates that this material can be used to define where elite structures would have been located in the now abandoned medieval village that sits at the summit of Monte Bonifato.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23764