After Antiquity: Ceramics and Society in the Aegean From the 7th to the 20th Century A.C: A Case Study from Boeotia, Central Greece (Archaeological Studies Leiden University)

This richly illustrated study offers a comprehensive discussion of medieval and post-medieval pottery from central Greece and the Aegean, and considers the relationship between pottery and Mediterranean society, economy and culture in the post-Roman periods. The main part of the book focuses on pottery from Boeotia, particularly ceramics collected by the Cambridge and Bradford Boeotia intensive survey project. Vroom combines ceramic data from thirty selected Boeotian sites in order to create a regional classification system with 48 diagnostic wares, ranging from locally produced Red Slip wares and amphorae to imported glazed wares from Italy and Turkey. She explores the cultural, technological and socio-economic aspects of local pottery production and distribution, using archaeological, documentary and ethnographic evidence, but also considers the wider picture when looking at the imported tin-glazed wares from the 16th to 18th centuries. In the last part of the book, Vroom combines her study of pottery with a wide range of documentary and pictorial sources to discuss the history of dining habits in the eastern Mediterranean during the Late Roman, Byzantine, 'Turkish' and Early Modern periods.