Les ateliers de céramique en Byzacène du Sud-ouest, approche diachronique

Abstract

The Byzacene of the Southwest is of great strategic importance, key to the steppes and gateway to the desert. The extreme paucity of literary sources makes any attempt to capture major socio-economic fluctuations almost impossible without recourse to archeology. We have chosen ceramology to understand the workshop dumps. This kind of initiative goes far beyond, by its nature and its approaches, the technical aspects to try to unveil the socio-economic aspects and the dialectical relations which governed them, in particular during the pivotal periods. Thus, we have tried to detect both the major stages that marked the emergence, development and decline of artisanal activity related to ceramics and the historical circumstances that determined them; this through five examples including two unpublished (Sidi Abdelkader and Ain er-Rchiha) and a third (Henchir en-Nadhour (Majoura)) which is considered, henceforth, as the first and only localized center, until now, producing of the African sigillata C/E and E.