The San Giovenale pottery : production and raw material

San Giovenale is a small inland Etruscan community approximately 60 km north of Rome. The site was excavated between 1956 and 1965 and the focus of the research has been aimed at the archaic period as well as the proto- Villanova period. The Late Etruscan period has up to now been more or less neglected. This resent work is to a large extent based on pottery and one cornerstone of the study is the belief that a majority of this Late Etruscan pottery is locally produced, not only the coarse ware but also the simpler tableware such as Late Creamware. One possible way to verify the hypotheses of a local production is by comparing the raw material components of the coarse ware and the tableware as well as clay deposits around the San Giovenale site. Very little of this kind of combined work between clay surveying, laboratory analyses of clays and pottery (thin-section analyses, thermal analyses, XRF-analyses, Carbon analyse and Mossbauerspectroscopy) and traditional studies of vessel shape, decoration and vessel function has previously been done on the small Etruscan inland settlements. (Less)