Sigillata Production at Lezoux (1St–2Nd Cen- Turies AD)

3 Practice before type: sigillata production at Lezoux (1st–2nd centuries AD) If the previous chapter showed that sigillata has not always been a standardized, homogeneous category in its practices of study, this chapter will extend the same argument to its past practices of production. It will trace the contingent processes leading to the emergence of terra sigillata as a standardized category at the main production site of the 2nd century AD, Lezoux. Instead of a retrospective story of the replace- ment of one type with well-defined attributes by another, the evolution of ceramic production becomes a situated alignment of practices, skills, and relations. This reframes both the history of Lezoux and the economic models brought to bear on it. But it also has more far-reaching consequences for sigillata’s historical role. The historical specificity of sigillata’s standardisation and homogeneity is already hinted at by the marked contrast with the ceramics described in the prequel to this chapter. Finally, as a result of its situated ‘category-ness’ established at Lezoux, sigillata facilitated competition, and shaped a specific trajectory of distribution and consumption, to be explored in the following chapters. 3.1 prequel: black-gloss wares and pre-sigillata Only a long-term perspective will succeed in bringing out the historical specificity of observed patterns and changes (Fig. 3.1). Before examining sigillata production, it is therefore helpful to rewind to the periods of the Republic or later Iron Age in the Western Mediterranean, and to their prototypical table wares, the so-called black-gloss wares. Produced roughly from the 4th until the 1st centuries BC, these fine wares act as the type-fossil for dating Republican contexts; much like sigillata does for later imperial sites. Studies of black-gloss wares have propagated similar concerns of chronology and typology, but have encountered rather more classificatory problems than sigillata scholarship. The first encompassing typology of black-gloss wares recognized three technical groups based on visible differences in clay and firing: Campana A, B, and C.198 At the time, the general consensus was that these technical differences reflected geographically different production sources: Campania, Tuscany, and Sicily respectively. Further typological and archaeometrical work soon made it clear, however, that these three groups did not easily map onto production sources.199 Both technically and geographically the differences proved to be less clear-cut and more variable than initially assumed.200 The production landscape is now recognized to have covered much of northeast Spain, Mediterranean Gaul, and western Italy, and to have been scattered over a multitude of centres with varying output. Whatever model can characterize the production organisation of black-gloss wares201, it is clear that production practices did not define products as a standardized and homogeneous category. Instead, forms, clays, firing techniques, production sites, and quality and care of execution betray variability as the defining feature of black-gloss wares. This explains pottery specialists’ difficulty in trying to pin down recurrent identifying traits, and a seemingly 198 Lamboglia 1952. 1998, 2006. 199 Morel 1981. Summary in Di Giuseppe 2012. 201 Di Giuseppe 2012, 23–32. 200 Cuomo di Caprio 2007, 321–325; Morel 1978; Principal 33 150 BC 100 BC 50 BC 0 AD 50 AD 100 AD 150 AD 200 AD 250 AD 300 AD 350 Fig. 3.1. Timeline of main ceramic productions discussed. never-ending subdivision of the analytical umbrella of ‘black-gloss wares’. It is this book’s claim that the different propensity to present-day classification of sigillata and black-gloss wares reveals something about their definition in past production practices. Despite their different definitions, sigillata was both practically and conceptually heir to the black- gloss tradition in the western Mediterranean. Exactly how the transition took shape remains a bone of contention, and should not concern this chapter. What does matter, is that some of black-gloss wares’ analytical bleeding is impinging on the start of sigillata production. This manifests itself in terminological debates over ‘pre-sigillata’ or ‘proto-sigillata’. One example are the so-called South Gaulish pre-sigillata: fine wares dated to the last decades of the 1st century BC, whose production sites were scattered across southwest Mediterranean France, in the hinterland of the Roman colony of Narbonne.202 As their name indicates, pre-sigillata pots have been characterized by a formal resemblance to contemporary Italian sigillata, the production of which had started off only a few decades earlier (ca. 40 BC), and which were being imported in the area under study. Where lies these products’ classificatory trap? Formally, they tend to conform to sigillata’s dictionary definition introduced at the beginning of this book. Nevertheless, a number of forms derive from earlier regional traditions of pottery production.203 Similarly, the clays used for pre-sigillata echoed the calcareous clays characteristic of sigillata production, but their variable CaO contents expresses a much wider latitude of variation in clay selection.204 Epigraphic stamps reminiscent of Italian products occur, but are rare. Most crucially, perhaps, firing of South Gaulish pre-sigillata pots was done in a reducing atmosphere, in contrast to terra sigillata. All the while, by playing with the cooling process and in the absence of sintering, the visual red appearance of sigillata vessels could be mirrored.205 These technical parameters sum up the challenge that the pre-sigillata phenomenon poses to the homogeneous and bounded analytical category of sigillata. Scholars have been at pains to protect the latter from the kind of ‘leakage’ that shaped studies of black-gloss ware for instance. In response, they devised two models to keep pre-sigillata firmly outside of the sigillata category and to maintain the lat- 202 Passelac 1986a, 1986b, 1992, 2009. ‘pre-sigillata’. 203 Martin 2005, 438, 441. 205 Passelac 2001, 2007; Passelac/Léon/Sciau 2008; Picon 204 Passelac 1986b. Bénévent/Dausse/Picon 2002 for other 2002a. 34 ter’s homogeneity. One solution has been to situate pre-sigillata in a teleological history of production: an inferior technique meant that they were just ‘not quite’ sigillata yet.206 The other option links the observed technological differences to economic opportunities: fully developed sigillata technology only counted as the optimum if long-distance export could render higher investments in production viable.207 I have discussed the historical context and theoretical implications of South Gaulish pre-sigillata in more detail elsewhere.208 What matters for the purpose of this chapter is that this context was one of active colonization, different to the later established empire in which sigillata circulated during the first two centuries AD. The production sites of South Gaulish pre-sigillata were situated in direct relation to loci of colonial intervention: in the colony of Narbonne, or near the villa sites and crossroads that restructured its hinterland. For now, two lessons follow from this discussion of black-gloss wares and pre-sigillata. Firstly, neither product was defined as a homogeneous category in past production. Their production practices did not maintain an either/or boundary between what counted as black-gloss wares or pre-sigillata and what did not – they did not conform to the analytical ‘dictionary’ model discussed in the previous chapter. Produc- tion sequences could not be summed up by a neatly defined package of traits but were characterized by a seemingly unstructured, ‘fluid’ variability.209 But why does this matter? The way in which things are defined leads them to create certain pos- sibilities for action, and shapes their trajectory.210 Put differently, the trajectory of black-gloss wares and pre-sigillata would have been different to that sketched in the following chapters for sigillata. The point is that these different conditions of possibility would have helped frame what tends to be called the ‘historical context’. Black-gloss wares and pre-sigillata did not structure actions in the way sigillata later would as a homogeneous category (cf. following chapters); and the historical conditions of the western Mediterranean in the Republic or of Late Iron Age South Gaul on the brink of colonization were not those of an established empire. In contrast, sigillata enters squarely within the chronology of the Roman empire, and, judging from the success and taken-for-grantedness of its dictionary definition discussed in the previous chapter, it is likely that it was defined as a homogeneous category in production at some times and places. But before running ahead, empirical detail needs to be added to the long-term perspective of changing definitions of table ware production. 3.2 revisiting the starting point The brief discussion of black-gloss wares and pre-sigillata helps to gage the historical specificity of what follows. But now the discussion will zoom in on a single production site and slow down to describe changes and continuities at a higher resolution. Lezoux (Central Gaul), the main sigillata production site in the 2nd century AD, allows for such a fine-grained description. Having shaped both sigillata scholarship and sigillata’s production in Roman times, Lezoux is the ideal case study. Maurice Picon did a landmark study on the technological changes in sigillata production at Lezoux, which exerted a large influence on the conceptualization of sigillata.211 As a result, Lezoux generally features as the key example for the transition between so-called ‘imitation’ or ‘cheaper’ (mode A firing212, non-calcareous clays, non sintered slips) and ‘real’ (mode C firing, calcareous clays, sintered slips) sigillata. Furthermore, Lezoux has the empirical benefit of offering insight into a long-term centre of ceramic activ- 206 Bémont 1990; Hoffmann 1995, 391; Wells 1990. ture and event. 207 Picon 2002a (see next section). 211 Picon 1973. 208 Van Oyen 2013, 2015c.

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