From clays to pots: chaînes opératoires and technical options at a burnt Late Iron Age potter’s workshop (north-eastern Italy)

The unusual discovery of a potter’s workshop suddenly destroyed by a firing-cum-collapse event at Montebello Vicentino (northeastern Italy), dated to the Late Iron Age (ca. late fifth–fourth centuries BC), offers the unique possibility of studying two parallel operational sequences or chaines opératoires of ceramic manufacturing in this period, by direct analysis of the various base materials and products lost during destruction. Raw materials (prepared clay batch, sand, and other temper inclusions), unfired vessels knocked to the ground by the collapse, and samples of fired pottery were comprehensively characterized by petrographic and mineralogical analysis. Comparisons with similar ceramic products found at nearby settlements of Montebello can also better define the differences between production which was actually taking place at the workshop at the moment of destruction and previous work, as documented by sherds found at the same site.