Sales markets and organisation of Roman sigillata potteries

The Roman Empire was supplied with terra sigillata (“Roman porcelain tableware”) throughout its territories. The production centres were mainly in Italy, Iberia and the Gallic and Germanic provinces. This gives rise to economic-historical questions as to the extent to which trade routes and sales centres can be reconstructed, or on the basis of which social, economic and legal parameters the found distributions came about.

The aim is to further expand the position of the existing online database “Samian Research” as an international, authoritative and leading repository on Roman trade issues in order to be able to develop cross-European research questions. In the coming years, the focus will be on the in-depth recording of production centres and distributions in Gaul, Iberia and the Danubian countries, in order to be better able to research the sales markets there. From this emerges the research goal of ascertaining to what extent the pre-industrial production and marketing structures of that time formed a basis for today’s European trade relations. A related means of achieving this goal is the establishment of an international research community for the collaborative curation of research data, as well as research into the production and marketing structures of the sigillata production centres. To this end, workshops lasting several days will be offered at various research institutions in Europe. During these events, the participants (teachers, students, citizen science) will be introduced to this digital research infrastructure.

Digital methods and tools are developed for research questions arising from the analysis of production and trade structures, by which Samian Research has developed – in addition to the original database functionality for determining pottery stamps – into a comprehensive toolbox with innovative digital analysis methods. At the same time, classical mapping tools are constantly being developed. The tools developed for specific subject domains provide in-depth insights into trade structures. The newly developed methods for interoperable integration of other resources – e.g. through LOD and SPARQL – enable real-time comparisons between statistically weighted amphorae and sigillata distributions. In terms of archaeological methodology, the project focuses on the development of data-driven bottom-up analysis procedures that fundamentally contribute to theory-building in Roman economic history research, starting from the disseminated materials.