Conventual Pottery in Sarzana (Eastern Liguria) Between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age

In Liguria, the archaeological methodology applied in the excavation of monastery sites, both male and female, poses significant problems involving integration and comparison within what is certainly a more complex framework that emerges from the documentary sources. Obviously these sources refer to specific meanings for particular objects and, at the same time, describe the presence of entire categories of products that, for preservation reasons, are rarely or never included in the excavation documentation. The analysis of objects providing evidence of the communal behaviour in relation to usage and individual ownership of the material culture, so elaborate within written sources, must be limited solely to ceramic pieces. In this paper the author intends on examining such materials in order to reconstruct the economic trends in the religious communities, to determine the supply sources and therefore, through the pottery objects, to propose a social and not just archaeological interpretation of the religious context.