An ancient industrial area in the southern Eifel

The overall aim of the project is a comprehensive evaluation of the economic significance of the Roman pottery district near Speicher in the context of ancient industrial areas.

The Roman potteries have been known for a long time, but the enormous density and extent of these finds – though promising in themselves – prevented a comprehensive investigation until now. Now, for the first time, a combination of modern prospecting methods, scientific analysis procedures, geographical information systems and archaeological studies makes it possible to systematically process the entire pottery district and its embedding in the settlement landscape.

This methodologically broad approach is to be used to assess the economic importance of  Speicher in Roman times. After reconstructing the pottery centre and its organisational structures in space and time, the project will focus on the interactions between production, society and environment. At the same time, the prerequisites for future studies of the export area are being created.

The project is directly integrated into the many years of research on pre-modern industrial areas at the LEIZA. The export-oriented districts that operated beyond the local market are particularly suitable for evaluating the performance of ancient economies from an archaeological perspective. Only in this way can economic cycles in the Roman Empire be worked out over longer periods of time. This helps us to better understand current (and perhaps also future) economic and social developments on a wide variety of scales. Important aspects here are the interactions between production and society as well as between production and the environment. In this way, they can help us to grasp the economic thinking and actions of the respective actors (producer, consumer and individual, group). The large-scale potteries at Speicher can make a significant contribution to such an understanding.

Geophysical prospection (Holger Schaaff, Benjamin Streubel)

The spatial reconstruction of the pottery area is carried out in the open field by means of geophysical prospection. The main objectives are to determine the actual number of pottery enterprises and to reconstruct them on the basis of the anomalies found. An area of about 100 hectares in the west and north of Herforst will be investigated. The criteria for determining the area are the recording of all previously known sites together with the immediate surroundings, the topography of the terrain and the basic suitability of the terrain for geophysical prospection. In addition, reports from residents and users of the fields about conspicuous accumulations of pottery, bricks and stones were taken into account; this applies especially to the area north of Herforst. The prospections are carried out by the company Eastern Atlas – Geophysical Prospecting + Measurement, Berlin.

Analysis of LiDAR data (Anja Cramer, Katrin Heyken, Benjamin Streubel)

LiDAR data are analysed for the spatial reconstruction of the pottery area in the forest. In a first step, a 274-hectare area is investigated, which includes all known find sites in the Speicher forest. It also includes the suspected sites that have already emerged after an initial inspection of the LiDAR data. The primary objectives are to determine the actual number of pottery enterprises in the forest and to reconstruct an infrastructure within the district, both in terms of paths and roads as well as an allocation of the enterprises to suspected local clay pits.

Building on this work in the forest and the results of the geophysical investigations in the field, the analysis of the LiDAR data will be extended around the by then recorded pottery area. The aim is to find an explanation for the lack of settlement sites within a radius of 1 to 2 km around the potteries known so far.

Inspection of suspected sites (Markus Helfert, Markus Scholz, Benjamin Streubel, Holger Schaaff)

From the beginning, targeted inspections of the suspected areas identified by the geophysical prospections are carried out with the aim of reconstructing the chronological development of the pottery district over the centuries. They take place twice a year as exercises lasting several days as part of the curricular practical modules of the Goethe University Frankfurt; as part of the association of universities in the Rhine-Main region, students from other universities can also be accepted.

Study 1 – The operating units (Angelika Hunold, Lutz Grunwald, Holger Schaaff; Stefan Wenzel)

The starting point for the research is all the documentation and finds on the potteries stored in the RLMT. The focus is on the old excavation sites “Auf der Zweibach”, “An der Langmauer” and “Pützchen” as well as the 2017 excavation. Study 1 concentrates on the reconstruction of the individual potteries in space and time. The focus is not only on technical questions, such as the layout, structure and temporal development of the businesses or the quality and quantity of production. Social aspects such as personnel structure, hierarchical formation, origin or migration and specialisation are also elaborated. The small size of the individual potteries already speaks in favour of family-based craft enterprises.

Study 2 – The Pottery District and its Economic Development (Angelika Hunold, Holger Schaaff).

This study is being carried out in the third year of the project; it incorporates all the results of the above-mentioned surveys and analyses as well as Study 1. Through the geophysical surveys and the analysis of the LiDAR data, we know the spatial extent of the pottery district and the district’s internal infrastructure, both in terms of the trail system and the deposits. Through the inspections of suspected sites and Study 1, we know the chronology of individual operations, which will be assessed here in summary. Quantitative calculations for individual works are also available. In addition, the research data management ensures a comparison with interim results of the parallel studies 3 and 4 as well as the last inspections of suspected sites.

Study 3 – The surroundings of the pottery district (Markus Scholz; Bastian Kaiser)

The research on the Roman industrial area of the eastern Eifel has confirmed the necessity of a holistic approach that includes not only the actual industries but also the entire surrounding area and the history of its settlement. For this reason, the Roman settlement of the surrounding area is to be dealt with as a settlement archaeological study within the framework of a dissertation at the IAW of the University of Frankfurt.

The geographical framework is a radius of 5-8 km around the pottery area near Speicher, which corresponds to a working area of about 100 km² in area. According to Krausse (2006) and Seiler (2015), at least five villae rusticae, five sanctuaries, 15 burial sites and about 30 settlement sites of uncertain character are located within this area. Thus, a study area of sufficient depth has been chosen in the comparatively densely populated ancient cultural landscape to be able to substantially answer the interrelations between the pottery area and the surrounding rural settlement.

Study 4 – Speicher compared with selected pottery centres (Lutz Grunwald)

This study runs parallel to Study 2. Speicher displays a settlement structure that is rather unusual for Roman pottery settlements. A comparison with other pottery centres therefore seems urgently needed to define Speicher’s position in the context of large Roman potteries. The comparison examines differences and similarities with the settlement and production structures of selected production sites for coarse and fine pottery in the Roman Empire, such as Weißenthurm, Mayen, Schwabmünchen or Dambach-la-Ville. The relationship to nearby Trier with its own ceramic production also plays a special role.

Archaeometry (Susanne Greiff)

The archaeometric study serves the geochemical and mineralogical characterisation of the seven common types of ware of the Speicherer pottery identified so far. It can draw on the range of methods successfully generated within the framework of the LEIZA research on pre-modern industrial areas (Xu 2012). The aim is to determine the geochemical and mineralogical variability within a type of ware as well as between the individual types of ware on a focused data set in order to support technical and economic archaeological research on infrastructure and sales markets with an initial material science database. These data, combined with the material typology and the archaeological evidence, can be interpreted from the perspective of the chronological differentiation and specialisation of individual businesses and their connections to each other. Furthermore, a differentiation from goods of different provenance becomes possible.

Research Data Management (Guido Heinz, Katrin Heyken, Allard Mees, Nico Wende)

Research data management accompanies the project continuously from start to finish. All data is stored in a central database and used by all partners via web-based interfaces. After completion of the project, the data will be made available to the scientific community via the LEIZAa data portal as standardised OGC services and in a WebGIS Open Access.