Potter’s tools from the workshop of Sextus Metilius Maximus (Crikvenica, Croatia): an approach to the reconstruction of the production technology

Abstract

The paper tackles the problem of the potter’s tool drawing on the examples uncovered at Crikvenica (Croatia), where a
pottery workshop inserted within the saltus of Sextus Metilius Maximus has been excavated. These objects, only sporadically
addressed within specialised literature, offer the possibility for interpretations based on their manufacture or sourcing
methods, their usage in the manufacturing process and within the single production centre.
Objects identified as tools have been classified by function and techniques of manufacture, but also by different materials
in which they were made. The analysis gave us the possibility to discuss production technology and potter’s know-how, and
to try to reconstruct certain cultural practices which might be signals of differences occurring within the pottery production
industry of the region at the passage from protohistory to the Roman era. In fact, Crikvenica style pottery and ceramics,
and the technology utilised to manufacture them seem to be foreign to the region, and are probably to be connected to the
very set up of the figlina.