The Architecture of Firing: The Interplay between Tradition and Innovation in the Potter’s Workplace

Crafting spaces are places where traditional and experimental approaches are combined to meet the needs of production. Thanks to the archaeological record, we can indeed observe these opposite aspects through specific evidence: the products and the structures used for firing. Arguably, changes recorded in the way pottery objects were fired, may originate both and at once from the adoption of a traditional way to transmit knowledge (e.g., empirical learning or by observing craftsmen roles within the workshop) and innovative ways to use it (either discovered by accident or as a result of an external contribution). Hence, this paper aims at assessing the impact that particular changes in the architecture of pre-Roman kilns – as recorded specifically but not exclusively among the Etruscan ones, from the end of the 9th to the beginning of the 5th century BC – may have had in the development of the firing processes, indeed expressing a unique interplay between tradition and innovation that can be found only in the potter’s workplace. By considering specific case-studies and using an interdisciplinary approach, which will combine experimental archaeology, ethnographic research and 3D modelling I will try to evaluate the impact of social and technological factors, such as the introduction of a foreign know-how in the organization of the chaîne opératoire. On the other hand, I will finally discuss how the preservation of a rigorous modus operandi may contribute to the product’s standardisation.