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Archaeology of craft and artisans in the Ottoman Empire: a case of ceramic production in Belgrade during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

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Abstract

This paper discusses an archaeology of ceramic craft and artisans in the sixteenth–seventeenth centuries Belgrade and problematises its relation to historical models of urban production in the Ottoman Empire. The study focuses on five common wares, representative of the Middle Danube region, found in well-defined consumption contexts of Belgrade’s intra and extra muros settlements. The production technology of these wares, including ceramic bodies, slips, and glazes, was studied with ceramic petrography and chemical analysis, and the results were interpreted using the chaîne opératoire conceptual framework. The petrographic study was also used for a preliminary provenance determination of raw materials. It is proposed that Monochrome Glazed Ware, Slip-Painted Ware, and Domestic Unglazed Ware were locally made in Belgrade following the Ottoman conquest in 1521. The emergence of this production coincides with the abrupt cultural change in the Middle Danube region marked by migrations and new socio-economic conditions initiated by the Ottomans. Traits of the local production are compared to the existing corpus of knowledge on the urban craftsmanship and guilds formulated in Ottoman historiography for the purpose of developing a cross-disciplinary approach to crafts and artisans in the Ottoman Empire.

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Data Availability

The datasets analysed during the current study are also available in the PhD thesis of Jelena Živković ‘Archaeology of Ottomanisation in the Middle Danube region: technological perspectives of pottery production in Belgrade between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries’, defended and deposited at UCL.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Thilo Rehren for the valuable comments and corrections, Nika Strugar Bevc for providing us with permission for sampling of ceramics from Dorćol stored in the Belgrade City Museum, Marko Popović for providing us with an easy access to the field documentation, Evangelia Kiriatzi and Noémi Müller for the WD-XRF analysis performed at the Fitch Laboratory of the British School of Athens, and Nebojša Šuletić for preparing a map (Fig. 1) for purposes of this paper. All other analyses were done at the Archaeological Materials Science Laboratories of UCL Qatar.

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Funding

The analytical work presented in this paper was supported by the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development through the PhD programme of UCL in Qatar. The archaeological study of ceramics in Belgrade was supported by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia. Presented material comes from the excavations conducted by the Institute of Archaeology (Belgrade Fortress Research Project), founded by the City of Belgrade, Secretariat for Culture.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Cyprus Institute, 20 Konstantinou Kavafi Street, 2121, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Jelena Živković & Myrto Georgakopoulou

  2. The Institute of Archaeology, Kneza Mihaila 35/IV, Belgrade, 11000, Serbia

    Vesna Bikić

  3. University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK

    José Cristobal Carvajal López

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  1. Jelena Živković
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  2. Vesna Bikić
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  3. Myrto Georgakopoulou
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  4. José Cristobal Carvajal López
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Contributions

Jelena Živković: Conceptualisation, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, writing-original, writing-review and editing, and visualisation

Vesna Bikić: Resources, supervision, writing-original, and writing-review and editing

Jose Cristobal Carvajal Lopez: Methodology, validation, supervision, and writing-review and editing

Myrto Georgakopoulou: Methodology, validation, formal analysis, supervision, and writing-review and editing

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Correspondence to Jelena Živković.

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Živković, J., Bikić, V., Georgakopoulou, M. et al. Archaeology of craft and artisans in the Ottoman Empire: a case of ceramic production in Belgrade during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 13, 63 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-021-01306-3

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