Ceramic production and raw materials in the Tuscan-Ligurian region: an archaeological and petrographic approach in a diachronic perspective

This contribution focuses on the history of ceramic production of a large geographic area of NW Italy summarized from an archaeological point of view but employing a petrographic approach. In this work we will briefly summarize the data and acquisitions mainly relating to the area between western Liguria and north-western Tuscany, also considering comparisons with the Central-South Italian volcanic area (S-Tuscany, Latium and Campania). The scope of our research is to reconstruct the productive districts combining information from Prehistory to the late Roman, Medieval, and post-medieval ages in a diachronic perspective. The region under study is characterized by a marked geodiversity allowing the definition of specific production areas based on minero-petrographic (including paleontological) data. Our long-term research combines information collected from different archaeological sources, from prehistoric ceramics to Roman pottery workshops identified in the region. This diachronic approach allows the definition of subregional productive districts characterized by the mineralogical-petrographic content of the products, that can be considered as fingerprints for pottery provenance. Our goal is to promote a «green archaeometry/green archaeology» approach, recycling and reusing old samples for reanalysis, rather than resample for new analyses and to limit new sampling to the strict necessary.