After the conquest: ceramics and migrations

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis 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.