“L’ espace opératoire de la chaîne opératoire”: Ethnoarchaeological approaches to spatial patterning of pottery workshops in the Mediterranean

Pottery workshops have been studied through a wide range of analytical lenses focusing either on materials or personnel: procurement of raw materials, apprenticeship strategies, forming and firing technologies, and connoisseurship studies of stylistic signatures. The spatial layout of these workshops where the chaîne opératoire is performed and where the agency of potters is manifested has not been explored fully. This paper provides the first spatial ethnoarchaeological dataset of select workshops for plain wares of small, medium, and large size in the potters’ quarter of Moknine (Tunisia). The space allocation is calculated for all major stages of ceramic manufacturing, from clay gathering to storage of fired pots, as well as the required circulation paths. The data is then reconfigured to address several questions, such as how much space of each workshop is open or (semi-) covered, how much space can be flexible for multiple uses vs. inflexible for single use, and finally how much of this space would have left substantial clues for its correct identification by archaeologists.