Start   .   2023

Duration   .   ongoing

Principal Investigator   .   José Carlos Quaresma (CHAM)

Institutions

Research Unit

CHAM — Centre for the Humanities

Università di Bologna

Coordinating Institution

Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas / Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Università di Bologna

Partners

Museo Archeologico di Classis/Ravenna

The 6th century AD, as the entire post-Roman Late Antiquity, remains a period of great difficulties for those who intend to study its phenomena. In this sense, Phocean Terra Sigillata became a crucial tool for contextual dating and the comprehension of trade routes. In this project, we intend to discuss the typological evolution of Late Phocean Terra Sigillata during the central decades of the 6th century AD, when type Hayes 3 is evolving from variant 3F into variants 3G and 3/10, leading to the main type of the second half/late 6th century AD, that is form Hayes 10. Type Hayes 3C, which covers intensively its markets in the late 5th century AD, is easy to classify, but types Hayes 3E, 3F and G compete for their markets in a diffuse pattern that poses huge problems for their morphological and chronological understanding.