The study on the Hellenistic and Roman material culture of Syracuse undertaken by IBAM–CNR allowed to address many issues related to the knowledge of the pottery found more than sixty years ago in the complex of the catacombs of Santa Lucia. The materials come largely from kiln dumps and include both wasters and finished pottery, the latter perhaps comes from residential areas. Research conducted by the IBAM–CNR team have been carried towards the establishment of chronologies, the acquisition of new documentation, the definition of production and typologies, the reconstruction of production processes and the contextualization of materials. The study allowed to call into question the furnace period of activities which can now be placed more likely between the II century BC and I century AD on the basis of a renewed interpretation of the data. Research on waste have provided important data on the pottery production in Syracuse during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, especially on black and red slip ware and Thin Walled Pottery. The definition of fabrics and types produced in Syracuse greatly expands our knowledge about types allowing to collocate them in the huge framework of Mediterranean pottery production. Particular attention has been paid to the transition from black to red slip pottery production. A new group of materials, in fact, reveals that Syracuse was probably one of the centers of experimentation with new techniques leading to the development of pottery production of the first imperial period.

I materiali ceramici NADIA BOTALLA BUSCAGLIA Lo studio dei reperti ceramici dell’ex priorato cluniacense di Castelletto Cervo ha consentito di inquadrare i circa 1400 frammenti rinvenuti che, nell’insieme, coprono un arco cronologico di circa dieci secoli a partire dal periodo precedente la fondazione priorale, sino alle più recenti fasi di occupazione del complesso. Pur nella permanente difficoltà di definire il panorama delle ceramiche in uso a ridosso dell’epoca della fondazione monastica sino a tutto il XIV secolo, è possibile, in linea generale, individuare due grandi insiemi ceramici ascrivibili rispettivamente a fine XIV-XVI secolo e al XIX secolo, per i quali risulta assai arduo, allo stato attuale delle conoscenze, precisare ulteriori scansioni interne anche a causa dell’elevata frammentarietà e dispersione stratigrafica dei reperti, dovute ad evidenti rimaneggiamenti avvenuti nel sito sin dall’epoca bassomedievale. Nel presentare il materiale ceramico si è adottata una suddivisione per classe tecnologica, cercando di delineare all’interno di ogni gruppo gli aspetti funzionali e la scansione cronologica dei vari manufatti, inquadrandoli nel panorama delle conoscenze regionali e subregionali in cui la maggior parte delle produzioni si colloca, segnalando caratteri peculiari che potrebbero suggerire eventuali relazioni con altre manifatture. parole chiave Ceramica medievale, ceramiche rivestite, ceramiche graffite, Vercellese, priorato cluniacense Pottery NADIA BOTALLA BUSCAGLIA The archaeological study of the pottery discovered in Castelletto Cervo’s former cluniac priory allowed to frame the 1400 fragments found that, overall, cover a period of about ten centuries from the period before the foundation of the priory, to the most recent stages of settlement of the complex. Despite the ongoing difficulties in defining the overview of pottery in use at the time of the monastic foundation until the end of the fourteenth century, it is possible, in principle, to identify two large ceramic sets attributable respectively at the end of the fourteenth-sixteenth century and the nineteenth century; for these groups it is very difficult, at the present state of knowledge, to specify additional internal scans. This difficulty is also due to the fragmentation and dispersion of stratigraphic findings, caused by natural and deliberated soil disturbance occurred at the site since the late medieval period. The presentation of this study is organized by technological classes of pottery, trying to define within each group the functional aspects and the chronology of the various components, framing them in the environment of regional and sub regional knowledge about pottery productions, signaling peculiar characteristics that might suggest any relationship with other manufactures. Medieval pottery, glazed pottery, “graffita” pottery, Vercellese, cluniac priory