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ABSTRACT
This article presents a brief overview of archaeological studies on the pottery produced and used during the eighth century, the period immediately after the conquest of al-Andalus. It demonstrates that in spite of valuable advances in the field, scholars have been limited in their considerations of the impact of post-conquest Muslim immigration upon ceramic production because of two main factors. The first is an excessive reliance on a flawed theory, namely that eighth-century ceramics were ambiguous, that is, typologically undefined ceramics, embedded in the transition between the Visigothic Kingdom and the Caliphate. The second is a lack of an appropriate methodology, a result of the particular development of the field of medieval pottery studies in Iberia, which has favored approaches that fail to account for a period of time during which changes in pottery manufacture were fast and primarily unrelated to the scale of production or the degree of specialization of the artisans. Consequently, the impact of post-conquest immigration of Muslims on ceramic production has been understudied. This article proposes to show how a different theoretical and methodological stance in the study of early Islamic ceramics can help to elucidate this impact and lend support to an alternative narrative of the emergence of al-Andalus.
Notes on contributor
José C. Carvajal López (Granada, Spain, 1979) graduated in History in 2001 and defended his PhD thesis in the University of Granada in 2007. He has studied the early Islamic period in Spain (7th-11th centuries), mainly through pottery analysis. After some years of experience in medieval and post-medieval archaeology in his home town, he was awarded a Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship in the University of Sheffield (UK, 2010-2012), held a position of Lecturer in Islamic Archaeology in UCL Qatar (Qatar, 2013-2017) and is currently a Lecturer of Historical Archaeology in the University of Leicester (UK). He has also developed projects in Albania, Greece, Qatar, Palestine and Iraqi Kurdistan. His main current project is The Crowded Desert, a survey and excavation to study the interaction between nomads and sedentary peoples in the north of Qatar.
Notes
1 Alba Calzado and Gutiérrez Lloret, “Las producciones de transición,” which follows the lines already established in Alba Calzado and Feijoo, “Pautas evolutivas.”
2 As is the case, for example, of the ceramics of Tolmo de Minateda, in Albacete (Amorós Ruiz, Contextos cerámicos del siglo VIII), or of Gózquez, in Madrid (Serrano Herrero et al., “La cerámica de los siglos VIII–IX,” esp. 283–85).
3 Alba Calzado and Gutiérrez Lloret, “Las producciones de transición,” 607; my translation.
4 Guichard, Al-Andalus.
5 García Sanjuán, “El concepto tributario,” esp. 107–16.
6 This terminology is used here as a means of simplification, and is inspired by the work of Alejandro García Sanjuán, but the responsibility lies entirely with me.
7 See, for example: Acién, “Sobre la función de los ḥuṣūn”; Entre el feudalismo y el Islam (eds. of 1994 and 1997); “Sobre el papel de la ideología.” His ideas were greatly influenced by Wickham, “The other transition.”
8 See Barceló, “Vespres del feudals” and the works collected in El sol que salió por Occidente. His thought was very much inspired by Amin, El desarrollo desigual and Guichard, Al-Andalus.
9 Gutiérrez Lloret has always been explicit in her complete support of Acien’s ideas, which is the backbone of her theoretical approach (e.g., Gutiérrez Lloret, “La arqueología en la historia del temprano al-Andalus,” 36). Alba Calzado maintains a more eclectic position, although in general it is fair to include him with the “transitionalists” for his emphasis on locating the change in ceramics of the Emirate period in the economic transition between autarky and market systems. Gutiérrez Lloret and Alba Calzado are not alone, as many archaeologists of al-Andalus have explicitly or implicitly embraced views of the transitionalist paradigm, in part because, as will be explained below, it offers a way to account for the phenomena observed in the archaeological record with the most frequently used methodologies of analysis.
10 Alba Calzado and Gutiérrez Lloret, “Las producciones de transición,” 606–7.
11 The debate should be read in this sequence: Gutiérrez Lloret, La cora de Tudmīr; Kirchner, “Indígenas y extranjeros”; Gutiérrez Lloret, “¿Arqueología o deconstrucción?”; Kirchner, “Indígenas y extranjeros, otra vez.”
12 Or Islamic social formation, as defined by Acién; see notes 7 and 13.
13 Following a model established in Acién, “Cerámica a torno lento en Bezmiliana.”
14 See Kirchner, “Las técnicas y los conjuntos documentales.”
15 Caballero Zoreda et al., Cerámicas tardorromanas y altomedievales.
16 Manzano, “Conclusiones.”
17 Cf. Carvajal López, La cerámica de Madīnat Ilbīra, esp. 345–48.
18 See note 2.
19 Cf. Manzano, Conquistadores, emires y califas.
20 Cf. Costin, “Craft Production,” 1044–46; Lemonnier, ed., Technological Choices; Stark, ed., The Archaeology of Social Boundaries.
21 Terés, “Linajes árabes en al-Andalus,” 99–100.
22 Guichard, Al-Andalus.
23 Serrano Herrero et al., “La cerámica de los siglos VIII–IX.” In this discussion they criticize my opinion on the impact of migration, and in particular my observation that eighth-century ceramics have already been found (cf. note 16), as “epistemological optimism.” This suggests that they expect to find clearer evidence of eighth-century ceramics in the future, something that I believe is not impossible, but improbable. They also dispute my assumption that definitive changes took place in the pottery of the eighth century. This is puzzling, because these changes have also been suggested by Alba Calzado and Gutiérrez Lloret without raising any criticism on the part of Serrano Herrero et al. Perhaps the accusation was aimed at the implication that no further development of pottery took place after the eighth century. To be sure, I never implied that. I was only pointing to the fact that definitive changes had by necessity been introduced in the eighth century, without ever denying that later changes happened.
24 Serrano Herrero et al., “La cerámica de los siglos VIII–IX,” 307; my translation.
25 Serrano Herrero et al. refer to two works by Gutiérrez Lloret: “Histoire et archéologie de la transition” and “El reconocimiento arqueológico de la islamización.” They could have equally mentioned “La islamización de Tudmīr” and “La arqueología en la historia del temprano al-Andalus.”
26 “Précoce et peu traumatisante” in Gutiérrez Lloret, “Histoire et archéologie de la transition,” 227; qtd. in Serrano Herrero et al., “La cerámica de los siglos VIII–IX,” 307.
27 Insoll, The Archaeology of Islam; Inskip, “Islam in Iberia or Iberian Islam.”
28 Carvajal López, “The Archaeology of Al-Andalus,” esp. 328.
29 Acién, “Sobre el papel de la ideología.”
30 Cf. García Sanjuán, La conquista islámica de la Península Ibérica.
31 Chalmeta, Invasión e islamización.
32 de Felipe, Identidad y onomástica.
33 For Pamplona, see Faro Carballa et al., “La presencia islámica en Pamplona”; de Miguel lbáñez, “La maqbara de la Plaza del Castillo.” For Nîmes, see Gleize et al., “Early Medieval Muslim Graves in France.”
34 Cf. Anthony, “Migration in Archeology”; Chapman and Dolukhanov, “The Baby and the Bathwater”; Anthony, “The Bath Refilled”; Härke, “Archaeologists and Migrations”; Burmeister, “Archaeology and Migration”; Härke, “The Debate”; and especially Hakenbeck, “Migration in Archaeology,” esp. 19–20.
35 Anthony, “Migration in Archeology,” 901–2.
36 Anthony, “Migration in Archeology,” 902–4.
37 Chalmeta, Invasión e islamización.
38 E.g., Guichard, Al-Andalus; de Felipe, Identidad y onomástica.
39 Anthony, “Migration in Archeology,” 902–5; Burmeister, “Archaeology and Migration.”
40 Barceló, “Inmigration berbère.”
41 Chalmeta, Invasión e islamización.
42 Hakenbeck, “Migration in Archaeology.”
43 Marín, “Los ulemas de Ilbïra.”
44 The regionalization of the distribution systems of pottery has been correctly linked to the decay of the large-scale production and distribution networks of the Roman system. See, for example, Arthur, “Form, Function and Technology.”
45 Rosselló’s Ensayo sistemático presented the first such system, but many more followed, as surveyed in Salvatierra and Castillo’s “Sistematizaciones y tipologías.”
46 Cf. Carvajal López and Jiménez Puertas, “Studies of the Early Medieval Pottery of Al-Andalus”; Carvajal López, “The Archaeology of Al-Andalus,” esp. 328.
47 There are too many to provide an exhaustive list here, but it is worth mentioning Peacock, Pottery in the Roman World; Arnold, Ceramic Theory and Cultural Process; and Orton et al., Pottery in Archaeology as some of the most representative of the advances before the 1980s. For later decades, the works mentioned in note 19 are a good start. The advances in archaeological science on ceramics are addressed in general by Orton and Hughes, Pottery in Archaeology, 2nd ed., and by Albero Santacreu, Materiality, Techniques and Society in Pottery Production.
48 Eg., Fernández Navarro, Tradición tecnológica.
49 Costin, “Craft Production Systems” and “Craft Production.”
50 Cf. note 43.
51 This is precisely a point made in Alba Calzado and Gutiérrez Lloret, “Las producciones de transición,” with which I have no disagreement.
52 The concepts of “field of action” and “project of self” are defined in Robb, “Beyond Agency.” The particular observations that follow come from a number of archaeological debates, but excessive use of references will be avoided. The works in which some of the ideas presented have been stated are indicated, but for a more general theoretical overview, the reader should refer to note 47.
53 Carvajal López, La cerámica de Madīnat Ilbīra; Carvajal López and Day, “Cooking Pots and Islamicization.”
54 Román Punzón and Carvajal López, “Space, shape and recipe.”
55 Álvarez García, “El yacimiento altomedieval del Cerro de la Verdeja”; Carvajal López, La cerámica de Madīnat Ilbīra.
56 Cf. Carvajal López and Jiménez Puertas, “Cuisine, Islamisation and Ceramics,” 41–42.
57 The technical terms used here for identification of ceramics shapes and types have been developed in Carvajal López, La cerámica de Madīnat Ilbīra and in Malpica Cuello et al., “La cerámica de Madīnat Ilbīra.”
58 Not to be confused with S-profiled pots of other parts of al-Andalus, which would match Type V rims in this series.
59 Malpica Cuello et al., “La cerámica de Madīnat Ilbīra.”
60 Maybe because they were made of wood or of metal, which are more rarely conserved.
61 See Carvajal López, La cerámica de Madīnat Ilbīra for all sites, except for Manzanil, for which a full publication is still in preparation.
62 Discussed in Carvajal López and Jiménez Puertas, “Cuisine, Islamisation and Ceramics,” 42–3.
63 Carvajal López and Day, “Cooking Pots and Islamicization.”
64 Magness, Jerusalem Ceramic Chronology.
65 Cf. Carvajal López, and Jiménez Puertas, “Cuisine, Islamisation and Ceramics,” 39–40.
66 Carvajal López and Day, “Cooking Pots and Islamicization.”
67 Gosden, Archaeology and Colonialism.
68 Cf. note 53.