The 10th Gerald Dunning Memorial Lecture: No Sex, Some H-M and Lots of Fine Trade: Medieval Ceramic Studies in Italy

Of Dunning’s interests in iconography, exotica and trade, only the last two are touched on in this paper. A short account is presented of the organisation and traditions of medieval archaeology in Italy, of the kinds of ceramic evidence available and of the apparent trends in the medieval pottery so far studied. In two north Italian regions pottery does not seem to reflect the pre-eminent role of their principal cities ‘in the ramifications of… trade’ as Dunning postulated. Cultural as well as economic history must have been a key determinant in pottery usage.