Preliminary approach to pottery technology of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age settlement El Morredon (Ebro valley, Spain) (C.1200–500 BCE) through archaeometric methods

Abstract

This study presents a novel approach to pottery technology of the Urnfield culture in the Middle Ebro Valley (Spain) through petrography and geochemical analyses. In the archaeological site of ‘El Morredón’, a large settlement occupied during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age, two petrographic fabrics and two main chemical groups have been identified, with the addition of grog as a temper in all samples as the main characteristic of the assemblage. Raw material procurement and paste recipes have been defined, revealing the specific technological choices of this community, which suggest the existence of a technological group in the Middle Ebro valley. Nonetheless, further studies with this methodology in other Urnfield’s sites in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula are still needed to validate this hypothesis.