(NOT) SEE THE WOOD FOR THE TREES? 19,700+ SHERDS OF SIGILLATA AND WHAT WE CAN DO WITH THEM...

Abstract

In its first stage, the ICRATES Project (Inventory of Crafts and Trade in the Roman East), of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and supported by the Fund for Scientific Research, Flanders-Belgium (G.0152.04), aims at collecting the published evidence on tablewares for the Eastern Mediterranean between ca. 150 BC and AD 700, in order to investigate and interpret distribution and social patterns of consumption. Apart from reconstructing patterns of exchange, the Project also wishes to examine what role these artefacts played in economic and socio-cultural spheres. The basic methodology to do so is by collecting the available published evidence in a database, quantifying this evidence per region to detect any similarities or differences that then require both further investigation and interpretation. In this paper, in order to illustrate our aims and the opportunities, we will focus on the period of Late Antiquity, specifically the distribution of major tablewares of the period.