Archeologia della produzione ceramica a Siracusa tra l'età ellenistica e la prima età imperiale

The study on the Hellenistic and Roman material culture of Syracuse undertaken by IBAM-CNR allowed to address many issues related to the knowledge of the pottery found more than sixty years ago in the complex of the catacombs of Santa Lucia. The materials come largely from kiln dumps and include both wasters and finished pottery, the latter perhaps comes from residential areas. Research conducted by the IBAM-CNR team have been carried towards the establishment of chronologies, the acquisition of new documentation, the definition of production and typologies, the reconstruction of production processes and the contextualization of materials. The study allowed to call into question the furnace period of activities which can now be placed more likely between the II century BC and I century AD on the basis of a renewed interpretation of the data. Research on waste have provided important data on the pottery production inSyracuse during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, especially on black and red slip ware and Thin Walled Pottery. The definition of fabrics and types produced in Syracuse greatly expands our knowledge about type sallowing to collocate them in the huge framework of Mediterranean pottery production. Particular attention has been paid to the transition from black to red slip pottery production. A new group of materials, in fact, reveals that Syracuse was probably one of the centers of experimentation with new techniques leading to the development of pottery production of the first imperial period.