This book is about the social experience of work in the Roman world. It examines this experience through the lens offered by a particular set of workers – potters and ceramicists in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. It undertakes this examination via the material remains of these workers and their work that are still preserved today – the remains of cleaned clay lying on work floors, pots discarded due to cracks and warping, modest structures built of mudbrick and stone, and scorched kilns reddened and blackened by long firings – in order to understand how everyday Romans lived and worked. Too often, ancient potters have been outshone by their products. This book refocuses attention on Roman potters, their communities, and their material culture to show how work happened and how it was experienced as a fundamentally social practice.

Just as there is increasing archaeological recognition that pots can be studied and analyzed in myriad ways to answer a multiplicity of social and cultural questions, so this book draws attention to the social lives of their makers, both through their experiences of working clay in their workshops and as part of their local communities, in order to enrich and complicate our understanding of Roman society. The potters that will be discussed worked on estates, in villages, and on the urban fringes. They manufactured dishes and plates, cooking pots and casseroles, and transport containers, and they were consequently embedded in different markets and operated at variable scales of production. Yet what binds these diverse examples together is the shared demands and experiences of transforming clay into ceramic in order to make a living,Footnote ¹ and what unites the analysis of these different contexts is a conceptual appreciation that “the social” and “the economic” are inseparable in a work setting. Through this exploration and analysis, the social structures and interrelationships, the economic ties, and the person–material connections are shown to underlay and interknit craft and labor in the Roman Empire.

This book draws together evidence from dozens of ceramic worksites from Asia Minor, the Near East, and Egypt – a record spanning over eight centuries (from the late second century BC into the seventh century AD). It represents one of the first attempts to integrate this material evidence into a social study. Archaeologists have employed the material record of ceramic workshops and their products for different means – most notably to analyze the organization of production and to reconstruct trade and ancient economy. Each of these archaeological applications employs the material record of pottery workshops and their production in different ways and to different ends. Clearly, ceramic workshops were undeniably economic places where goods were manufactured for distribution, and they were important as setting the starting point for the economic cycle of production, distribution, and consumption. However, they were also workplaces occupied for long hours by groups of workers, workers who lived within intersecting frameworks of tradition, work culture, labor practice, family, guild, friendships, and rivalries. A better understanding of the social and cultural lives of ceramics workers can offer a means of balancing and humanizing economic narratives. The workshop, from the perspective adopted in this book, is a locus for small-scale social encounters – as a place of social performances of status and hierarchy, economic competition, shared cultural practices, and community collaboration. Therefore, this book also promotes the social interpretation of archaeological workshops, beyond simply the Roman context.

As the following pages will show, many social dynamics could be at play in the ancient workplace. There are infinite combinations of relationships involved, but some particular examples have been selected as the evidence provides fresh perspectives on our understanding of potters and pottery for the period: the relationship between potter and workgroup; between potter and occupation; and the relationship between potter and pot within a wider community of potters. Some of these relationships can be interpreted through the traces of pottery workshops, the assemblages of their material worlds, and the human actors in them. What this relational approach demonstrates is not only how different workshop contexts were experienced but also how each differing experience highlights the fundamentally social nature of working with ceramic. Taking this broad, synoptic, historicizing view – a view that also incorporates selected textual sources on potters, when available – allows the construction of a rich, theoretically robust exploration of how social work and labor was constituted in the Roman East.

Social History and Labor

Fundamentally, work unites people across time and space. At the broadest possible conception, work comprises those activities by which people sustain their lives (Harper and Lawson Reference Harper, Lawson, Harper and Lawson2003, xi). The activities that are considered to be “work” are, however, culturally relative, and how work is recognized in terms of distinct professions distributed across different industries is therefore a fundamental means of structuring and characterizing society. This recognition is not novel for the scholarship of ancient work; while this book differs from many others in its approach and theoretical framing, it is not alone in attempting to socialize ancient work and labor – in the last two decades increasing attention has been paid by scholars (both archaeologists and historians) to the working lives of everyday Romans.Footnote ² This social approach to the archaeology of Roman work and labor sits at the intersection of several ongoing conversations in the field of Roman studies. Some of these conversations concern the place of labor and craft professions in wider ancient society, whereas some reflect an archaeological interest in the products of labor – either in terms of their place in economic cycles or in material culture studies of consumer goods.

This current, modern interest in the everyday working lives of ancient Romans finds few parallels with most of the textual voices of that period, however. Many ancient authors probably would not have considered such modest ceramic workshops – or, indeed, workshops more generally – as warranting such attention. Some, in fact, were very candid in their views; neither Cato nor Cicero held craft workshops in high esteem, in spite of their willingness to profit from investment in such trades (D’Arms Reference D’Arms, D’Arms and Kopff1980; Reay Reference Reay2005). In Cicero’s well-known assessment of occupations (De Officiis 1, 150–51), craft workshops were not deemed places appropriate for men of standing and reputation (Lis and Soly Reference Lis, Soly, Lis and Soly2012; Verboven Reference Verboven2014). Of course, the opinions held by Roman elites about those involved in the manufacturing professions certainly do not reflect the entirety of views recorded from antiquity (Joshel Reference Joshel1992; George Reference George, D’Ambra and Métraux2006; Bond Reference Bond2016; Lis and Soly Reference Lis, Soly, Verboven and Laes2016; Tran Reference Tran, Verboven and Laes2016). That said, because of the textual lens through which much of Roman society tended to be viewed in earlier scholarship, elite attitudes to manual work have received disproportionate attention (see Verboven Reference Verboven2014 for a fuller discussion). This has exerted a profound and distorting bias on how we understand work, its socialization, and its value in the ancient world, and it is key to move beyond this and understand the importance of craft industries in antiquity as critical in balancing historical narratives and experiences of antiquity – particularly modest professions, like ceramic work, that are best accessed through their material remains. The cultural anthropologist Herbert Applebaum, in his study of the anthropology of work, characterized its social role:

Balancing and nuancing elite imaginaries of work, other bodies of ancient text provide clearer and more detailed evidence for the professional and personal lives of craftspeople of the period. Indeed, in some respects many dimensions of the socioeconomic experiences of these professions in the eastern Mediterranean have been successfully reconstructed by historians. Studies of professional associations have emphasized their sociability and civic activities (Kloppenborg and Wilson Reference Kloppenborg and Wilson1996; van Nijf Reference van Nijf1997, Reference van Nijf, Jongman and Kleijwegt2002; Mees Reference Mees2002, 217–18; Diosono Reference Diosono2007; Verboven Reference Verboven, Verboven and Laes2016); how professionals worked collectively to foster and protect business interests (Mees Reference Mees2002, 217–18; Venticinque Reference Venticinque2010; Liu 2016); how the culture of such organizations reinforced a shared sense of identity (van Nijf Reference van Nijf, Jongman and Kleijwegt2002; Liu Reference Liu, Harris, Aubert and Várhelyi2005); and how the local activities of such associations might vary in different urban contexts (Arnaoutoglou Reference Arnaoutoglou2011; Reference Arnaoutoglou, Wilson and Flohr2016). Contracts preserved on Egyptian papyri, for example, indicate how the training of new generations of craftspeople might be conducted through apprenticeship (Westermann Reference Westermann1914a, Reference Westermann1914b; Bradley Reference Bradley1985; Saller Reference Saller and Rawson2011; Freu Reference Freu2015). Detailed analysis of occupational titles found on funerary stelae and in work contracts demonstrates how highly specialized the active work force was, even within single industries (Wissemann Reference Wissemann1984; Zimmer Reference Zimmer, Temporini and Haase1985; Trombley Reference Trombley1987; Joshel Reference Joshel1992; Tran Reference Tran, Andreau and Bordeaux2007; Iacomi Reference Iacomi, Aydınoğlu and Şenol2008; Ruffing Reference Ruffing2008; Hawkins Reference Hawkins2016). Other texts have been useful in reconstructing business practices of the period through accounting records (Aubert Reference Aubert1994; Andreau Reference Andreau1999) and civic codes (Arnaoutoglou Reference Arnaoutoglou2002; Aubert and Sirks Reference Aubert and Sirks2002; Baldini Lippolis Reference Baldini Lippolis, Lavan, Özgenel and Sarantis2005; Riggsby Reference Riggsby2010, 25–46). Yet still other texts concern workshop placement through construction recommendations (Saliou Reference Saliou1994, Reference Saliou1996) and private lease contracts (Berger Reference Berger1948; Cockle Reference Cockle1981; Rowlandson Reference Rowlandson1998; Mayerson Reference Mayerson2000; Martin Reference Martin2001; Du Plessis Reference Du Plessis2006). These sources provide bodies of evidence regarding the lives and activities of working professions that are otherwise extremely difficult to reconstruct from the archaeological evidence alone and that help to contextualize potters in a wider world of labor and working communities. The archaeological evidence presented in the following chapters therefore draws on such important textual comparanda.

Why Potters?

In spite of this rich corpus of epigraphic and archival documents, few such records were written by or for “working class” audiences, leaving the lives of craftspeople largely without narrative from either personal or collective perspectives. Even references to craftspeople are relatively uncommon on stone or bronze inscriptions, and references to ceramicists and potters are especially uncommon – especially when compared to sources on other contemporary craftspeople for the period and region (Ruffing Reference Ruffing2008, 208). This may reflect the status of professions too poor to have erected funerary monuments, too lowly to be referenced in major laws, or so ignoble that they are referenced demeaningly in literature (Joshel Reference Joshel1992, 1–9). That this was the case for potters is a view perhaps supported by Mayerson (Reference Mayerson2000), who analyzed the documented payment of potters making jars on Egyptian rural estates.Footnote ³ He determined that the payment to these potters was extremely low and supported a general picture of a penurious profession, so much so “that the term ‘slave labor’ might be appropriate” (Mayerson Reference Mayerson2000, 100). Trombley, citing Diocletian’s Price Edict, also notes the low wages paid to brickmakers (Reference Trombley1987, 20, f. 21). Mees recounts that some potters described in Egyptian sources were cash-strapped to the point that they failed to pay a month’s rent (Reference Mees2002, 265–66). What remains unclear, however, is the extent to which these examples of brick and jar manufacturers compare with other ceramicists working in differing contexts (especially urban contexts) and making different wares. Moreover, ancient wage data is inherently difficult to compare across different contexts (see Freu Reference Freu2015 for discussion). Indeed, Mees notes that Egyptian lease contracts involving potters number approximately forty (out of a corpus of more than 50,000 documents), and these sporadic cases chronologically span a period of more than 1,000 years (Reference Mees2002, 257). The picture that we construct from such textual sources alone is incomplete.

Other references to the social position of potters further reinforce the impression of a laborer profession that was sometimes considered in pejorative terms. Rabbinic sources of the period, for example, describe potting as a dirty job and reference potters among the “unrefined” people, alongside donkey-drivers, camel-drivers, shepherds, and shopkeepers (Magen and Peleg Reference Magen, Peleg, Humbert, Zangenberg and Galor2006, 92–93). The status associated with such work was deemed so undesirable that, in one text (B. Qidd. 82a), fathers were advised not to teach their sons the profession because it was a profession of a “robber” (Magen and Peleg Reference Magen, Peleg, Humbert, Zangenberg and Galor2006, 92–93Footnote ⁴). Vitto recounts another Rabbinic text involving the son of a man trained in three professions (goldsmithing, glassmaking, and potting) and, when described by an individual who hated him, he was referenced as the “son of a potter,” rather than that of a goldsmith or glassmaker (Midrash Numbers Rabbah 2.17, in Vitto Reference Vitto1986, 61). When considered in direct comparison to other craftspeople, again, the references to the status of potters sometimes seem disparaging.

The collective impression derived from these references is that some potters were among the working poor, whose social status was further denigrated through hard, dirty, manual labor. This, alone, makes them a profession of interest for understanding non-elite Roman society, and nuancing the textual record with archaeological data might complicate our understanding of how such a “lowly” profession was experienced in this period. However, status – whether defined through economic standing or social standing – is relative. Ceramic work was considered to involve “strenuous” labor by ancient sources (Midrash Exodus Rabbah 1.27, Vitto Reference Vitto1986, 50–51), but potting was simultaneously recognized as a skilled profession (Ecclesiasticus Ben Sira 38, 29–32; Vitto Reference Vitto1986, 61). It is unlikely that the sorts of views promoted by the likes of Cicero, or the Rabbinic sources, capture the nuance and ambiguity of this profession’s status – a profession present in many communities across the eastern Roman provinces and whose products fed very different markets, were widely consumed, and were in constant demand. In fact, potters and ceramicists appear consistently in other (namely papyrological) sources with regular enough frequency to attest to their local importance from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine periods (Ruffing Reference Ruffing2008, 80–81).

Funerary contexts offer an alternative view of craftspeople. There are examples of funerary inscriptions commemorating the lives, and the achievements, of many craftspeople and tradespeople from the eastern provinces. Within this larger corpus, references to potters are, again, limited (Freu Reference Freu2015, 193–95), but there are occasionally rich local examples in an otherwise sparse body of evidence, such as the Late Antique funerary reliefs from the necropolis of Korykos in Cilicia Trachis dated from the fifth and sixth centuries AD (Patlagean Reference Patlagean1977; Trombley Reference Trombley1987; Iacomi Reference Iacomi, Aydınoğlu and Şenol2008; Gallimore Reference Gallimore2010, 155). Of the 600 funerary reliefs, more than 456 inscriptions provide professional trade titles, as well as military, civic, or Church titles. The appearance of so many epigraphic examples referencing modest crafts and trades likely represents a rather unusual regional habit of using professional title in private funerary commemoration within the community (Varinlioǧlu Reference Varinlioǧlu, Dally and Ratté2011),Footnote ⁵ albeit occurring during a period when trade title, in general, is more frequently referenced (Ruffing Reference Ruffing2008, 47). Nonetheless, the corpus indicates the active presence of dozens of professional trades in the town (Patlagean Reference Patlagean1977, 159–63, tab. 7), and a considerable number (26 cases, or over 5 percentFootnote ⁶) are described as potter (kerameus [κεραμεύς]) (Trombley Reference Trombley1987, 20). There are also instances of potters who served in the local Church parish, indicating their public role in local religious institutions (Patlagean Reference Patlagean1977, 168, f. 58, inscription no. 643; Varinlioǧlu Reference Varinlioǧlu, Dally and Ratté2011, 178). The frequency and the visibility of potters in this community has been attributed to their role in supporting the flourishing Cilician wine industry of the time and the important status of this industry in supplying Constantinople (Iacomi Reference Iacomi, Aydınoğlu and Şenol2008), although again this was also a period when tradespeople seem to play a more visible civic role generally (Carrié Reference Carrié, Carrié and Lizzi Testa2002; Sodini Reference Sodini, Lavan and Bowden2003; Zanini Reference Zanini, Machado, Gutteridge and Bowden2006). Whether this reflects changing social structures in Late Antiquity or simply an unusual economic context, their community roles meant that their burial plots were placed alongside those of civic, military, and Church officials. The Korykos funerary inscriptions stand in contrast to references to the ceramic profession on other media in highlighting both the frequency of potters and their roles within local communities.

The Archaeology of Pottery Workshops

The textual references to potters are clearly neither consistent nor easily interpreted and surely reflect a more complicated reality than that based on many textual references alone. The limited range of source types about the lives and work of potters places them among the textually “quiet” masses of the Roman world; occasionally appearing in public and private documents but rarely offering much with which to reconstruct biographies or social histories. Of course, many professions might be considered in these terms; based on papyrological sources, Ruffing identified a subset of professions as fundamental to a local village economy; these include baker, weaver, fuller, dyer, tailor, stonecutter, builder, carpenter/joiner, leather worker, blacksmith, goldsmith, barber, as well as potter (Reference Ruffing2008, 86–87).

Potters and their work, however, differ from these other Roman professions in one major respect: While the written references to potters are relatively limited (like many other trades), the archaeological record of potters and ceramicists is unusually ubiquitous. In fact, from an archaeological perspective, ceramic work is surely the most widely and best-documented industry of the Roman period. Vestiges of workshop structures, infrastructural features (wheel pits, kilns), material culture used in making pottery (hand tools, molds, wheel bats), traces of raw materials (abandoned clay quarries, charred remains of fuel), as well as many millions of pottery products (both finished and failed) appear extensively, in all regions of the Roman world. Pottery kilns, alone, number in the hundreds across the eastern provinces (Hasaki and Raptis Reference Hasaki, Raptis, Cucuzza, Giannattasio and Pallecchi2016). In contrast to other industries, like carpentry or blacksmithing (thought to have been present in most communities), ceramic workshops tend to be especially conspicuous archaeologically due to the preservation of archaeologically durable heat-transformed materials (kiln fragments, charcoal and ash residues) and the large scale and intrinsic archaeological conspicuousness of dumps with wasters. The specialized use of particular materials (especially clay) and the unique features of updraft pottery kilns (with elevated chamber floor) also make these worksites relatively easy to distinguish from the remains of other pyro-technological industries.

This paradox – between a highly constrained (and biased) textual record and a prodigiously abundant archaeological record – has been well recognized by the occasional historical treatment of potters in the eastern provinces (Cockle Reference Cockle1981; Vitto Reference Vitto1986; Wilfong Reference Wilfong2008; Gallimore Reference Gallimore2010). The richness of the archaeological record of potter workshops provides a potential avenue into understanding the experience of lives oriented around craftwork in the Roman East and assessing the internal diversity present therein. A deep and comparative analysis of the archaeological record will show that the social lives and work experiences of potters working across this wide region, manufacturing different products for different consumers, or working in different centuries or within different religious and cultural communities were considerable. Consequently, the following chapters bring current archaeological evidence to bear on the wider discussions concerning the lived experiences of the Roman “working classes” through the occupation of ceramic work. They do so by framing and interpreting the material evidence in ways that draw on current archaeological and social theory in order to vitalize the quotidian experiences of this craft work – working to help, and yet compete with, neighbors in the same profession; working to learn community traditions, sometimes sustained over many generations; working for or within a powerful institution; working and engaging with the material world of the workshop. In these ways, the practices of potters are interpreted in their workplaces to reconstruct the lived experiences, the social contexts, and material entanglements of the Roman potting professions in the eastern provinces.

Ceramic Workshop Studies

In contrast to the potters of Classical Greece, those of the Roman and Late Antique periods have never been seen as artists (Hayes Reference Hayes1997, 12–14) and have never attracted the attention of art historians who long have attempted to understand masters, workshops, and schools making Classical Greek vases (Heilmeyer Reference Heilmeyer2004). This has largely left the study of Roman pottery production in the hands of archaeological ceramologists. Perhaps for this reason, and perhaps in conjunction with the limited historical record regarding potters, many studies of Roman ceramic production have looked for interpretive inspiration in ethnographic studies of modern or historical pottery industries, rather than Renaissance painters. Consequently, the rich ethnographic record of the Mediterranean basin has directed the discussion of these workplaces toward anthropologically inspired social and economic questions (Curtis Reference Curtis1962; Hampe and Winter Reference Hampe and Winter1962; Matson Reference Matson, Borza and Currubba1973; Peacock Reference Peacock1982; Annis Reference Annis1985, Reference Annis2007; Nicholson and Patterson Reference Nicholson and Patterson1985a, Reference Nicholson and Patterson1985b; Crane Reference Crane1988; London Reference London1989; Henein Reference Henein1997; Hudson Reference Hudson, Freestone and Gaimster1997; Tekkök Reference Tekkök and Takaoğlu2004; Hasaki Reference Hasaki, Lawall and Lund2011). This ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological focusFootnote ⁷ importantly has drawn attention to the people behind the pots and kilns. While comparative historical or ethnographic cases should be used with caution, there are instances in which more modern examples provide fresh perspectives on ancient evidence. As will be discussed, the ability of neighbors to associate products with their makers, the complicated social dynamics of economic competition within a workshop cluster, the “scaffolding” training of apprentices are all widely noted in both ethnographic and historical accounts, and while the specifics of any ethnographic or historical case are not analogous, acknowledging the regular appearance of these social dynamics in contexts of craft production opens opportunities to think through the archaeology of Roman potters.

There has long been an appreciation that these Roman pottery workshops can help to access the experiences of working communities via an understanding the socioeconomic organization of workshops (Peacock Reference Peacock1982; Hasaki Reference Hasaki, Lawall and Lund2011), the technologies of the period (Nicholson and Patterson Reference Nicholson and Patterson1985b; Costello Reference Costello and Rice1997; Peña and McCallum Reference Peña and McCallum2009; Nicholson Reference Nicholson, Aston, Bader, Gallorini, Nicholson and Buckingham2011), and apprenticeship and training (Hasaki Reference Hasaki and Wendrich2012). Most notably, David Peacock’s seminal work Pottery in the Roman World: An Ethnoarchaeological Approach has had an enduring impact on Roman archaeology. This is in part because of its effectiveness in populating the archaeological remains of workshops with people living according to Roman lifeways and institutions.Footnote ⁸ His interpretation of the archaeological record was consequently and convincingly presented as a means to access both the economic organizations of workshops and the social context of its labor, and it will be revisited in subsequent chapters.

Pottery Studies

While the study of ceramic work and labor has received some attention by Roman archaeologists, the products manufactured in these workshops have attracted far greater interest from archaeologists invested in building local and regional pottery chronologies and typologies. Due to its preservation, frequency, and sensitivity to stylistic change, pottery has proven invaluable to modern archaeological practice. More numerous than coins and cheaper to analyze en masse than radiometric samples, pottery has been almost universally employed within Roman archaeology as a dating tool (for discussion, see Lund et al. Reference Lund, Malfitana, Poblome, Malfitana, Poblome and Lund2006a). These typo-chronological studies relying on stylistic trends have additionally demonstrated the diversity of potting traditions and consumer practices maintained by communities across Asia Minor, the Near East, and Egypt, as well as the contours of change within local ceramic industries and their repertoire of wares.

As this foundational literature makes clear, stylistic and formal diversity can be observed even among settlements in the same region, and these local stylistic traditions were sometimes rooted in much earlier traditions that continued and endured in the workshops of the region into and during the Roman period; in some cases, these traditions have been tracked over as many as eight centuries. This is perhaps best documented in the case of tableware, which in the Hellenistic period showed significant variability across the eastern Mediterranean. The very distinctive Nabataean pottery manufactured at Petra is one such case of a distinctive regional tradition with its very thin (“eggshell”) walls and its floral and vegetal motifs painted in red or brown paint on a buff fabric (Vickers Reference Vickers1994; Schmid Reference Schmid1995, Reference Schmid1997, Reference Schmid2000, Reference Schmid and Politis2007).Footnote ⁹ These wares were first produced in the Hellenistic period and came to influence other production centers. By contrast, the contemporary tableware market of Judaea during the Second Temple period involved locally manufactured plain ware pottery or limestone carved forms (Magen Reference Magen2002; Leibner Reference Leibner and Hezser2010).Footnote ¹⁰ In Pisidia (Asia Minor), color-coated wares, thought to have been influenced by earlier Achaemenid traditions, were manufactured at Late Hellenistic Sagalassos (van der Enden et al. Reference van der Enden, Poblome, Bes, Meyza and Domżalski2014; Daems and Poblome Reference Daems and Poblome2017), while tableware manufactured in other parts of Asia Minor demonstrated stronger influences from the Classical and Hellenistic wares of Greece, particularly through the use of classical Greek mythology and motifs on relief decorated wares. These Greek influences have been particularly well documented with regard to molded relief hemispherical bowl production, bowls which were manufactured at several major Hellenistic production centers in Asia Minor – for example, Pergamon, Kibyra, Ephesos (Rotroff Reference Rotroff2006; Ladstätter Reference Ladstätter and Meyer2007; Japp Reference Japp and Meysa2014). Likewise, Hellenistic black-slipped wares, some with overpainting, were made in the Egyptian delta at Buto (Seton-Williams Reference Seton-Williams1966, Reference Seton-Williams1967; Ballet Reference Ballet2007; Ballet et al. Reference Ballet, Béguin, Herbich, Lecuyot, Schmitt, Goyon and Cardin2007).

By the time that these regions were territorially integrated as Roman provinces, potting communities within them already maintained bustling production centers supporting a rich array of products. Some centers of these “eastern wares” would become major producers of pottery that was shipped across the empire (Eastern Sigillata A [ESA], Eastern Sigillata B [ESB], Eastern Sigillata D [ESD]), influencing and being influenced by other Roman red-slipped tableware traditions (Italian Terra Sigillata [ITS], Gallic Terra Sigillata [GTS], and later African Red Slip [ARS] ware). Tableware industries are perhaps the best-documented examples of heterogeneity, but local workshops making cooking wares across the region display further diversity in typological and stylistic influences related to different culinary traditions at cities like Palmyra, Gerasa, and Petra, and in the Galilee (Adan-Bayewitz Reference Adan-Bayewitz1993; Krogulska Reference Krogulska1996, Reference Krogulska1985; Gerber Reference Gerber, Gurt, Esparraguera, Buxeda i Garrigós and Cau Ontiveros2005, Reference Gerber, Menchelli, Santoro, Pasquinucci and Guiducci2010; Kristensen Reference Kristensen, Lichtenberger and Raja2017). Likewise, Hellenistic- and Roman-period amphorae present formal distinctions tied to their role as containers for regional agricultural products (Johnson and Stager Reference Johnson, Stager and Gitin1995, 99; Reynolds Reference Reynolds, Gurt i Esparraguerra, Buxeda i Garrigós and Cau Ontiveros2005; Rauh et al. Reference Rauh, Autret, Lund and Frass2013). In the Roman and Late Roman periods, the eastern provinces manufactured very well-known amphora types used to distribute goods throughout the empire. The workshops of Late Roman 1 amphorae from Cilicia and Cyprus (Autret and Rauh Reference Autret, Rauh, Fischer-Genz, Gerber and Hamel2010; Dodd Reference Dodd2020), Gaza Jars from Palestine (Mayerson Reference Mayerson1992; Israel Reference Israel1995; Johnson and Stager Reference Johnson, Stager and Gitin1995; Oked Reference Oked, Sasson, Safrai and Sagiv2001), Egyptian amphorae from Lake Mareotis (Empereur and Picon Reference Empereur, Picon and Empereur1998; Dixneuf Reference Dixneuf2011), and Black Sea amphorae from the region of Sinope (Kassab Tezgör Reference Kassab Tezgör2010) will all be discussed; each is well documented, and they collectively demonstrate different types of production organization, from distributed estate production to urban workshops. The landscape of ceramic traditions across the region was both functionally and stylistically diverse already prior to incorporation into the Roman Empire and set an already richly complex stage for subsequent exchanges of ideas and people.

In the eastern provinces, eagerness to reconstruct patterns of supra-regional trade of Roman ceramics, sometimes incited speculation regarding production locations prior to the discovery of associated kilns (for examples of such attributions, see Hayes Reference Hayes1972). The use of pottery as a proxy of trade even instigated regional surveys, with the stated objective to discover ceramic production sites (Empereur and Picon Reference Empereur and Picon1986a, Reference Empereur, Picon, Empereur and Garlan1986b; Mayet and Picon Reference Mayet and Picon1986; Empereur et al. Reference Empereur, Kritzas and Marangou1991; Israel Reference Israel1993, Reference Israel1995; for discussion, see Ballet et al. Reference Ballet, Béguin, Lecuyot and Schmitt2019). In these reconstructions, the workshops themselves were seldom of central academic interest but rather were used to set a nodal point from which all distribution paths might emanate. In recent years, the discovery of many more production sites has successfully filled out the manufacturing geography of the eastern Mediterranean and expanded our understanding of economic networks (Bes Reference Bes2015; Leidwanger Reference Leidwanger2017). It has also assisted in reconstructing regional economies – perhaps, however, at the expense of more human-scaled geographies and economies. Nevertheless, with a growing recognition that similar wares were sometimes being manufactured at multiple production sites, it is becoming accepted that “wares,” like ESA or Late Roman D (LRD) ware, might better be understood as regional products resulting from a shared material culture tradition or “vocabulary,” sometimes termed ceramic koiné (Reynolds Reference Reynolds, Gurt i Esparraguerra, Buxeda i Garrigós and Cau Ontiveros2005; Leibner Reference Leibner and Hezser2010; Cau et al. Reference Cau, Reynolds and Bonifay2011; Poblome and Firat Reference Poblome, Firat, Cau, Reynolds and Bonifay2011; Versluys Reference Versluys2014; Rotroff et al. Reference Rotroff, Daszkiewicz, Schneider and Owen2018).Footnote ¹¹ This has implications for how we relate individual workshop sites to one another and to typologically based ceramic fabrics and styles.

This book, by contrast, takes a divergent approach. By focusing on the workshop as the starting point, these larger social and economic phenomena, variously described as “ware group” or ceramic koiné, can be understood as comprising the cumulative, heterogeneous products of multiple production sites. These macrostructures are necessarily abstracted and simplified categories; uncommon or less popular product types or variants are regularly observed in the repertoire, but later weeded out from the larger ware groups, or vessels are observed as being of variable quality (Jackson et al. Reference Jackson, Zelle, Vandeput and Köse2012; Murphy Reference Murphy, Pitts and Van Oyen2017). However, each of those production areas was typically composed of the products of multiple workshops, which could be further occupied by multiple active potters. In this regard, a deeper analysis of these potters, their workshops, and their communities substantially enriches Roman pottery studies of the eastern provinces by identifying how large, regional economic processes were articulated with the workings of small-scale, local workshops and industries.

Material Culture Studies of Pottery

The sorts of typo-chronological and trade analyses that are the backbone of Roman pottery studies rely on changing styles and functions of pottery over time – both to date archaeological contexts and to trace changing market demands. Consequently, there is a (tacit) recognition that ceramic traditions were never static outputs of cultural practices, but they were in part responsive to market forces and changing consumer preferences within the empire. Understanding these changes and their influences has long attracted the attention of scholars concerned with issues of cultural identity and provincial cultural practices. However, social questions concerning pottery have been much more directed at their distribution and consumption than the social context of their making and makers – that is, the locus where decisions concerning particular forms with particular characteristics were taken and actualized. Nonetheless, current interpretations of ceramic consumption and use have moved well beyond equating little red pots with “the Romans” and have come to accommodate ever greater theoretical complexity (Ladstätter Reference Ladstätter and Meyer2007; Van Oyen Reference Van Oyen2015). The shifting cultural influences on local pottery styles have come to be understood as playing a central role in constructing identity, whether theorized in terms of cultural bricolage (Terrenato Reference Terrenato, Forcey, Hawthorne and Witcher1998; Roth Reference Roth2007), cultural hybridity (Antonaccio Reference Antonaccio, Hurst and Owen2005), or “glocal” styles (Pitts and Versluys Reference Pitts and Versluys2015).

The pottery record offers a particularly versatile body of materials with which to ask large-scale questions, as these ceramic goods were widely consumed and are thought to have been affordable to wide swathes of society.Footnote ¹² Pottery, in this regard, provides a means of differentiating consumer practices between socioeconomic groups and in varied cultural contexts (Greene Reference Greene2008; Pitts Reference Pitts2008; Dietler Reference Dietler2015). Furthermore, practices involving culinary traditions or commensality were also activities that employed consumer goods beyond pottery, and in this regard, pottery can be seen as part of a larger and richer material world, whether in the dining rooms, kitchens, or tabernae of everyday Romans (Vickers and Gill Reference Vickers and Gill1994; Cool Reference Cool2006; Swift Reference Swift2009, Reference Swift2017). While these studies of practice, context, and meaning-construction are incorporating the study of pottery into material culture studies in new and exciting ways of thinking, they nonetheless often continue to privilege the users of these items (in contexts of consumption) over their makers (in contexts of manufacture). This is unfortunate. As will be demonstrated, knowledge of competing wares made by craft neighbors or made by far-away workshops also influenced the appearance and use of pottery for the period,Footnote ¹³ and a detailed study of workshop contexts can help to reconstruct how, why, and in what circumstances formal and stylistic influences might appear in the repertoire of a potter. After all, every pot that appeared on the Roman table also was once part of a workshop assemblage composed of pottery wheels, molds, tools, kilns, and clay, and decisions affecting form and style could have different meanings and importance within the small-group dynamics of workshops. By foregrounding manufacture over consumption, this book shows how Roman cultural dynamics within the workshop were as much dependent on the social network of production as they were influenced by consumer demand and provincial fashions.

Scope: Defining Ceramic Industries

Ceramological research on Roman wares is bringing ever greater nuance to the regional traditions of ceramic styles and forms as well as the cultural meanings of such diversity. Appreciating such diversity of product styles and repertoire also complicates how we describe and understand differences among ancient workers of clay. For our present purposes, such an appreciation especially complicates the appropriateness of discussing brickmakers in the same volume as lamp makers, for example. Modern industry is typically defined by the material being processed (clay) or the market sector supplied by the products (building industry, house goods, etc.). Indeed, the material properties of clay make it an extremely adaptive material with which to work and one that was employed in the Roman period for vastly different purposes – from artistic sculpture to cooking pots. This versatility encouraged its use in a wide range of consumption contexts. Pottery, of course, is the most ubiquitous of Roman ceramic artifacts; however, even among ceramic goods, pottery filled a wide range of functions, was manufactured using materials with requisite properties, and was fashioned into shapes with different aesthetic and stylistic characteristics. Excavated workshops are often classified by their wares (e.g., amphorae, lamps, tablewares). We categorize ceramics according to ware type, but it does not always seem that this was a meaningful emic category in terms of how Roman ceramicists defined their industry. With workshops variably specialized in particular types of goods, this leads to various complications in attempting to circumscribe ceramic “industries” in the Roman world. Brick and tile were sometimes produced alongside pottery, and molded lamps were sometimes produced in workshops making wheel-thrown pottery. Categorizing workshops according to simple product groups seems therefore problematic.

These difficulties in defining ceramic industries and workshops are likewise expressed in ancient textual sources, which offer little assistance in clearly bounding our discussion of potters and other ceramicists. This is because there was no single naming system or universal convention for classifying ceramic workshops or ceramicist workers in the Roman world. Some workshops were described as simply a “pottery workshop” (keramikon ergastērion [κεραμικòν ἐργαστήριον]), while others were described more specifically by the products manufactured, for example, “amphora workshop” (kouphokeramourgion [κουϕοκεραμουργĩον]) (Gallimore Reference Gallimore2010, 161). Attempting to understand and define ancient ceramic industries from recorded professional titles is even more problematic (described further in Chapter 3). Indeed, Ruffing (Reference Ruffing2008, 60–79) notes several ways in which the use of occupational titles in the textual record could be flexible and context-specific.Footnote ¹⁴ For example, most are described by the general term, “potter” (kerameus [κεραμεύς]), although more specific job titles are sometimes also observed referencing the type of product made – for example, fineware potters (leptokerameis, [λεπτοκεραμεĩς]) or amphorae potters (kouphokerameis [κουϕοκεραμεĩς], kerameis oinikou keramou [κεραμεĩς οἰνικοῠ κεράμου]) (Gallimore Reference Gallimore2010, 161). To further complicate the matter, it has been noted that professional titles become increasingly specialized from the third century AD onwards, with specific reference sometimes given to their products (Ruffing Reference Ruffing2008, 83–84). Mees saw this as reflecting a growing horizontal specialization within the ceramic industry, particularly among amphora or jug makers, potters, and brickmakers (Reference Mees2002, 234).

Ruffing (Reference Ruffing2008), conversely, observed three scales of specialization in clay-working based on professional titles. At the most general level, differences were observed between potter (kerameus [κεραμεύς], keramoplastēs [κεραμοπλάστης], keramourgos [κεραμουργός], ostrakas [ὀστρακᾶς]), lamp maker (lampadiokopos [λαμπαδιοκόπος], likhnikarios [λιχνικάριος]), terracotta maker (plastēs [πλάστης]), and brickmaker (kistiplinthourgos [κιστιπλινϑουργος], plasteutēs [πλαστευτής; πλινϑευτής], plinthobolos [πλινϑοβόλος], plinthopoios [πλινϑοποιός], plinthoulkos [πλινϑουλκός], plinthourgos [πλινϑουργός]), with the latter likely referencing the making of mudbricks. These distinctions seem to reflect the sorts of markets that these workers were supplying, for instance, building supplies, household items, ritual items. However, they might also have implications regarding the skills and methods of production involved. Among terracotta makers and potters, more specific product distinctions also could be noted. Among terracotta makers, there were theopoios (ϑεοποιός), korallioplastēs (κοραλλιοπλάστης), and koloplastēs (κωλοπλάστης). The greatest degree of specialization, however, was described in the work titles of potters including those making large coarse clay vessels (kouphokerameus [κουϕοκεραμεύς], kouphokeramourgos [κουϕοκεραμουργός]) with specific types of coarseware sometimes mentioned (kerameus oinikou keramou [κεραμεύς οἰνικοῦ κεράμου]). There were also potters making fine, small vessels (leptokerameus [λεπτοκεραμεύς]) with specific types of fineware sometimes mentioned (e.g., ekpōmatopoios [ἐκπωματοποίος), kuthrobrokhos [κυϑροβρόχος), kuthroplastēs [κυϑροπλάστης]Footnote ¹⁵) (Ruffing Reference Ruffing2008, 83–84, 139–40). Ruffing interpreted the ceramics industry as presenting particularly high levels of work title specialization when compared with other crafts industries, and he understood this as a consequence of the wide range of everyday items manufactured in the material, as well as the more frequent appearance of potters in papyrological texts (when compared with references on inscriptions) (Reference Ruffing2008, 207–8).

If the regional comparative studies present broad yet sometimes ambiguous differences in industry references, then an epigraphic case might offer some insight into contemporary local understanding of ceramic work. The Late Antique funerary record at Korykos once again provides a pertinent dataset of local professional titles. At Korykos, work titles for more than thirty-one ceramicists have been recovered, and the most common professional title used to describe ceramic workers is kerameus (κεραμεύς), appearing twenty-nine times (Iacomi Reference Iacomi, Aydınoğlu and Şenol2008, 24). In the corpus, there is little distinction between potters making household pottery and ceramicists making tiles for the building industry (Patlagean Reference Patlagean1977, 166). More specific ceramic work titles also appear, although each only once; these terms include a “maker of earthenware vessels” ostrakarios (ὀστρακάριος) and a “maker of lekane” lekaniourgos (λεκανιουργός) (Iacomi Reference Iacomi, Aydınoğlu and Şenol2008, 24–25). These distinctions fit into the structures and patterns of specialization noted for the wider region and period by Ruffing (Reference Ruffing2008), in that they reference the type of material (i.e., clay) being worked and the sometimes specific product types being manufactured, yet they do not, unsurprisingly, reflect modern typologies of ceramic markets (pottery versus ceramic building materials [CBM]). While there seems to be some variation in title depending on medium and context, the lack of consistency within the Korykos corpus demonstrates a seemingly flexible set of cultural reference points for how differences within ceramic industries might be expressed.

Attempting to reconstruct the structures of, and differences between, ceramic industries from references to individual work titles seems unlikely, but professional titles are nonetheless helpful in identifying some of the ways that occupational differences in ceramic work might have been understood by contemporary society. This is also demonstrated by three lease contracts from Oxyrhynchus (Cockle Reference Cockle1981; Gallimore Reference Gallimore2010, 178), which each refer to potters producing the same range of wares (i.e., Oxyrhynchite four-choes jars, double ceramia, and two-choes jars), albeit in variable quantities. One potter was described as simply kerameus (κεραμεύς), and a second was described with additional detail as kerameus oi nikou keramou (κεραμεύς οι᾽νικοῦ κεράμου, “a potter who makes earthenware jars”) (Cockle Reference Cockle1981, 90; Gallimore Reference Gallimore2010, 178). Thus, potters contracted to manufacture similar types of vessels were professionally referenced in slightly different ways, and again, the use of job title was clearly not rigid.

Ultimately, the terminological distinctions according to consumer-defined “industry sectors” (e.g., the building industry, agricultural production and exportation, domestic markets, religious consumption), the repertoire of production (tablewares, cooking wares, amphorae, lamps), or the materials used (e.g., finewares, coarsewares, common wares) find some relation to the specialization of production identified archaeologically with some workshops, although certainly not all and certainly not consistently. Both the archaeological and textual records support a view of flexible job titles and overlapping specializations. For the purposes of the following chapters, these overlapping and sometimes ambiguous references made to individuals working clay are considered to support taking a wide, inclusive view of ceramic industries.

Geographic Parameters

Evidence of pottery production has been found in every province of the Roman Empire and given the distribution of some wares across the breadth of the Mediterranean world (and beyond), it is clear that the economic webs in which these wares were situated rarely respected provincial boundaries and were traded across and beyond the territories of the empire. This book addresses pottery production in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire in Asia Minor (modern Turkey), the Near East (particularly the areas of modern Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria), and Egypt (particularly the delta region) between the late second century BC and the seventh century AD (Figure 1). Within these regions,Footnote ¹⁶ particular emphasis is on their respective Mediterranean littorals, as home to the largest urban entities and demographic concentrations and as those areas in which most archaeological reconnaissance has been conducted.

1 Map of sites described in the text.

Over the last twenty years, the eastern regions of the Roman Empire have yielded a great deal of high-quality published data documenting (in detail) ceramological work. Thus, one reason for the expansive geographic scope of this book is to employ this well-studied and regionally well-published data and to highlight the unique evidence coming from these areas (Figure 1). Additionally, as has been noted, Asia Minor, the Near East, and Egypt supported a number of craft contexts and potting traditions during the period. These were highly varied landscapes occupied by cultural and religious groups with different histories and craft traditions. There is also evidence for differing rates of economic development over time and intensities across these provinces. Consequently, the geographic parameters of the study serve to illustrate the variable social experiences of ceramic work.

Finally, it is perhaps important to mention which regions are (perhaps conspicuously) absent. The book does not, for instance, include Greece or North Africa outside the Nile Valley and Delta. It is impossible to imagine that the workshops of the western coast of Asia Minor were not influenced by the work of crafts in Greece or that the workshops of the Egyptian oases and delta were not more broadly connected to the dynamics of North African production sites. This has been documented. Nonetheless, if this book were to incorporate either Greece with its long-studied Corinthian potters’ quarter or Athenian kerameikosFootnote ¹⁷ or North Africa with its regional production of amphorae, cooking wares, or ARS, the sheer quantity and quality of archaeological research already published from those regions would disproportionately skew the discussion. Such is also the case with regions of modern France, Italy, Germany, and BritainFootnote ¹⁸ where some workshop clusters have been studied for more than a century, such as La Graufesenque and Montans in France or Magdalensberg in Austria. Building on these established traditions of workshop studies, questions of scale, production organization, and technological know-how – in short, the socioeconomic nature of craft production – have accordingly dominated in those regions of the empire.Footnote ¹⁹ By contrast, many archaeologists working in the eastern provinces have long been preoccupied by different sorts of questions, particularly relating to urbanism and public building projects. While these research agendas are rapidly expanding to include more information on daily life, there is still much to be done to incorporate the eastern Mediterranean evidence into the systematic and comparative analyses of Roman-period shops and workshops – potteries included. This volume attempts to contribute to those efforts.

Chronology

This book is about Roman potters and ceramicists, so the primary aim is to understand ceramic work in the Roman period. However, different regions of the eastern Mediterranean were officially incorporated into Roman territorial domain at different times. This was a gradual process, and – importantly for the study of crafts – there is often clear continuity in the activity of workshops both before and after political horizons (Lund Reference Lund, Archibald, Davies and Gabrielsen2005, 241). This is not to say that typologies and styles of pottery remained unchanged; there are well-documented region-wide changes in style (Hawthorne Reference Hawthorne, Meadows, Lemke and Heron1997; Hudson Reference Hudson2006; Vroom Reference Vroom, Lavan, Swift and Putzeys2007; Murphy and Poblome Reference Murphy and Poblome2016); nor is it claimed that political processes might not affect pottery production (Lund Reference Lund, Bilde and Lawall2014; Reference Lund, Giannopoulou and Kallini2016, 839). However, in order to understand the full breadth of these changes, an expansive chronological frame is employed: from the late second century BC into the seventh century AD. This presents some complications, particularly as concerns region-specific periodization and terminology.Footnote ²⁰ The transition from Roman to Late Roman or Late Antique phasing also warrants an additional note, as the workshops of the later phases are much better represented in the archaeological record. In fact, many more Late Roman and Late Antique workshop sites are documented from the region than either Late Hellenistic or Roman Imperial periods. This is in part a function of archaeological preservation (the super-positioning of later occupations) and in part due to archaeological research design privileging the excavation of urban centers (as will be discussed in Chapter 8, in the Late Roman period workshops begin to move into cities, where they are found more readily by archaeologists).

Inclusion of Late Antique workshops warrants other considerations, of course. In Late Antiquity, not only did the styles, motifs, and repertoire of pottery change in relation to changing consumer practices and religious identities (Hudson Reference Hudson2006; Vroom Reference Vroom, Lavan, Swift and Putzeys2007), but also new institutions, particularly the Christian Church, sometimes directly supported these artisans (see Chapter 2). Changing cities and urban society placed trades and craftspeople in new social positions (Sodini Reference Sodini, Lavan and Bowden2003; Zanini Reference Zanini, Machado, Gutteridge and Bowden2006) alongside a growing role in tax collecting by professional associations (Carrié Reference Carrié, Carrié and Lizzi Testa2002). Changing regional economies built on agricultural works supported thriving oil and wine industries across much of the eastern Mediterranean, which relied on amphorae for bottling (Wickham Reference Wickham2006; Leidwanger Reference Leidwanger2017). These changes were experienced differently at different sites, at different times, and in different regions. Nonetheless, several of the local ceramicist communities discussed in the following chapters were continuously active throughout these changes, and, as will be demonstrated, there were continuities in the social practices and working lives of these communities from earlier traditions into the Late Antique period. Thus, this more flexible and wider chronological scope has been adopted to capture long-term sociocultural trends within local communities, rather than reflecting political phases.

Challenges and Biases

Ultimately, this book is not intended to be a comprehensive overview of all archaeological workshops or pottery types from the region. There are likely (and inevitably) pottery workshops that are not discussed, and, with the perpetually growing body of published data, there will certainly be other examples that will flesh out the social experience of ceramic work in new ways.

Moreover, there are certain biases within and challenges surrounding the current published data from this region, factors that impact the nature and depth of some discussions and that have guided the selection of case studies described in the following chapters. In terms of workshop excavations, the number of detailed contextual studies that identify the exact findspots of hand tools, molds, and potter’s wheels remain relatively limited from the region. Several production sites, by contrast, have been identified only by regional archaeological survey (Empereur and Picon Reference Empereur and Picon1986a, Reference Empereur, Picon, Empereur and Garlan1986b; Israel Reference Israel1995; Autret and Rauh Reference Autret, Rauh, Fischer-Genz, Gerber and Hamel2010; Jackson et al. Reference Jackson, Zelle, Vandeput and Köse2012; Vokaer Reference Vokaer and Lavan2013; Ballet et al. Reference Ballet, Béguin, Lecuyot and Schmitt2019), with some projects employing geophysical techniques to supplement surface material (Jackson et al. Reference Jackson, Zelle, Vandeput and Köse2012; Ballet et al. Reference Ballet, Béguin, Lecuyot and Schmitt2019). Therefore, the study of these sites has been conducted using very different methods. Furthermore, tableware, amphorae, and lamp workshops are far better represented than workshops manufacturing cooking wares, everyday kitchen wares, or ceramic building materials,Footnote ²¹ and when a workshop manufactured tablewares, amphorae, or lamps alongside other types of wares, the former types of goods tend to be better published. In spite of these limitations and challenges, the archaeology of workshops recovered and documented from these eastern regions nonetheless presents some extremely important case studies with which to broaden the discussion on potters in the Roman world.

Chapter Objectives and Organization

The following chapters of this volume each focus on different cultural, social, and economic relationships between ancient potters and their craft work. In each section, different sets of relationship (social, material, architectural) are spotlighted via the archaeological record of workshops and their contexts – complex, heterogeneous assemblages of workers, raw materials, products, technologies, workshops, and urban infrastructure. The archaeological evidence is supplemented with insights from social and economic history and modern comparative anthropology.

The structure of the following chapters moves through the archaeological record to highlight different features of social life in these ancient workplaces. Chapter 2, Workshops: Models versus Practice, relates the archaeological evidence of pottery workshops from the eastern Mediterranean within several well-established socioeconomic models of production organization. Then, drawing on more recent theoretical approaches, it considers alternative arrangements as reflecting important cultural practices. Chapter 3, Process, People, and Working Conditions, focuses specifically on the labor dynamics of these workshops in order to appreciate how the workplace and production process structured the working lives of complex labor groups with different specializations, statuses, and working conditions. Chapter 4, Cultural Practices and Ritual Lives of Potters in the Workshop, uses the archaeology of these workplaces to reconstruct daily life in the workshop. More than simply an economic hub of manufacturing, the workshop comes to be seen as a place of social experience and meaning to its occupants. Chapter 5, Potting Traditions, Craft Learning, and Product Innovation, investigates traditions in production through intergenerational learning and then considers how product innovations are introduced. Moving beyond models that privilege consumer demand as the primary driver for product change, this chapter balances consumer interests with those of the workshop and long-established local potting traditions. Chapter 6, Socially Embedded Technologies and Local Technological Styles, looks at the technologies of production, particularly pottery wheels and kilns, in order to contextualize the technological choices and innovations made in the workshops of the eastern provinces.

The subsequent chapters turn to issues beyond the workshop. Chapter 7, Internal Social Dynamics of Industry Clusters: Cooperation and Competition, considers the important role of workshop nucleation in creating communities of production, which witnessed complex dynamics of collaboration, as well as competition among workshops. Chapter 8, Urban Industry, Topographies, and Community Relations, looks at pottery workshops in urban contexts; often seen as urban outcasts relegated to peri-urban areas, the place of ceramic workshops is instead understood as dynamically placed between a range of push and pull factors that change through time and through the history of cities. Finally, the conclusion reflects upon and draws together the complex social relationships and small-scale community dynamics.