Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This work presents an approach to the funerary spaces located in the central area of the peninsula, on the southern slope of the Central System, characterized by the existence of different types of burials, among which the presence of tombs carved into the rock stands out. This study is not limited to investigating the characteristics of this type of burial, but also deals with an essential aspect such as its integration into the landscape, which would be part of the elements that indicate late-ancient (6th-8th Centuries) and early-medieval (9th-12th Centuries) rural population. Funeral rites and practices constitute one of the fundamental components of any human group and thanks to the archaeological record we can make an approximation to the funeral spaces in this era of transformations. Archaeological prospecting is a fundamental tool for characterising the organisation of the territory. Through the analysis of the relationships established between these funerary spaces, the known places of habitat and the buildings of worship, we try to understand the dynamics of population of the peasant communities that generated and exploited these landscapes.

To tackle the subject of glazed furniture, which constitutes a rather modest part of the studied cargoes of the Islamic shipwrecks of Provence, is however of crucial importance in terms of the diffusion of techniques in the earlyMiddle Ages Mediterranean. The products transported by ships from the coasts of the Iberian Levant make it possible to determine, as accurately as possible, the dating of these sunken "closed ensembles". Moreover, the comparison of this knowledge with data from the south-eastern peninsula (Pechina/Almería) is essential for understanding the commercial dynamics of the early Mediterranean Middle Ages.    

This paper presents a review of the archaeological and historical knowledge on Andalusian settlement in Catalonia as obtained through the funerary record.  A comparison is also made with the province of Castellón. This study also contains new data regarding the cemetery of Plà de Almatà (Balaguer) and cemeteries from Vall d’Uixó (Castellón). Catalonia was part of the Upper Frontier of al-Andalus, and as such its settlement patterns were different to the rest of Šarq al-Andalus, represented by the province of Catellón. Funerary archaeology and physical anthropology provide useful and unique tools to study these features and patterns. Although taphonomic aspects of skeletal preservation and the amount of excavation activity have influenced the available funerary record, historical processes cannot be overlooked. For this current study, an exhaustive review of the literature and available data from these regions has been undertaken with the aim of providing a broader interpretation of the period and recommendations for future research.

The archaeological interventions developed in different sites of the area known as the Tablero Alto (north of the city of Córdoba) have allowed the exhumation of a series of large buildings that point towards the existence of a vast Umayyad almunia in this sector.  Despite the partiality of the results obtained, the analysis of these buildings as a whole allows to glimpse how the Islamic occupation was structured, and how it evolved along the time it remained in use. Furthermore, on a macrospatial level, the insertion of these constructions within a larger territory dominated by the almunia of al-Ruṣāfa, leads us to suggest their relationship with the lands chosen by 'Abd al-Raḥmān I to install his complex at the foot of Córdoba's mountain range.

The analysis of the early middle age pottery productions is a marginal issue in the studies of the Portuguese Middle Age. A situation that has generated, nowadays, the lack of director fossils that help in the study of the material culture of this period. In this paper, we seek to address the reasons for this situation through an analytical approach to the history of the investigation of early middle age pottery in Portugal. A reflection that we hope may improve the perception of the current state of research, in which we will highlight what, in our opinion, are the priority lines of research development.

Blue and lustre ceramics were widely distributed in the Mediterranean basin between the 13th and 15th centuries, reaching northern Europe, the Near East and Egypt. The Iberian workshops, especially those in Malaga and Valencia, are the main provenances for the different North African sites, such as Tunis and Bejaïa sites, where this ceramic production was evidenced in the Maghreb, although its origin is still controversial. The small repertoire of blue and / or lustre ceramics, discovered in Tlemcen, in the Zayyānid citadel of al-Mishwār, is added to these, which refers to the circulation space of this type of tableware in the central Maghreb and to testimonies of cultural relations and trade between the Nasrids of Granada, the kingdom of Aragon and the Zayyānids of Tlemcen. We will try to approach these ceramics mainly from the morphological and stylistic point of view in order to determine the origin or the production center.

New archaeological data from the Priorat County (Tarragona) are presented. They refer to a badly known period, the time span between the 7th to 10th centuries. These data have been obtained in the course of archaeological investigations whose object was Prehistory. The emergence of information related to the medieval period in prehistoric sites affects two important aspects. The first of them is to contribute to the study of the settlement within this period, in which the data seem to indicate the absence of rupture and population vacuum. The second refers to methodological considerations that highlight the bias that certain scientific prejudices have introduced into the data.

In this paper a review for the earliest glazed ceramics from al-Andalus is proposed. From archaeometrical analyses, the first glazes are characterised, their preservations and alteration problems are explained and the different technological traditions that coexisted during the Late Emirate period in Córdoba are identified. Moreover, technological connections are sought with other contemporary Islamic and Byzantine territories.

The city of Ṣabra al-Manṣūriyya, located 1 km south of the city of Kairouan, was the capital of the Fatimids of Ifrīqiya from 947 until 973 J.-C., then of their zirid governors, until the middle of the eleventh century, before succumbing to the Hilalian invasions in 1057 J.-C. Archaeological research conducted on this site since the 20s of the last century and until the last excavation campaigns carried out as part of the Franco-Tunisian project from 2003 to 2006, have yielded abundant of ceramic materials ranging from the 10th to the the 13th century. As a whole, the lot of material discovered is dominated in its part by limestone and culinary productions. Moreover, it is worth mentioning the presence of several types of rare products, including the cuerda seca, subject of this study. It is therefore a question of retracing the characteristic of this production, to ask about the nature, the origin and the chronology of this production. The essential of this approach is illustrated by a rare piece discovered in the last few years on the site of the disappeared city.

The present paper presents a reflexion about the different indicators of ceramic production and distribution in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula. This reflexion is based on the information provided by different research teams in recent years about the Early Medieval Times in the Iberian Peninsula, and the comparison of different indicators of ceramic production and distribution in the southeast of  it, where coexisted hand-made, wheel made and glazed pottery  during  the early medieval period. The data provided in this paper is indicating that diverse production and distribution systems coexisted in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula between the seventh and ninth centuries AD