painted jug

MB 3403

Object type jug

Culture/period Roman world

Materials pottery

Technique wheel-thrown

Mint

Production date -40 / -25

Museum Museu de Badalona

Current location Exposició permanent

Archaeological site Ciutat romana de Baetulo. C. Pujol

Township Badalona (Europa, Espanya, Catalunya, Barcelona, Barcelonès)

Dimensions 23 x 17,2 x 6,8 cm

Description

Oinochoe-type jug of Iberian ceramic or Iberian tradition painted with geometric decoration, and with series of birds and vegetables. It was located inside a silo on Pujol Street. The jar has a trefoil rim with two circular eyes in relief below. The neck is narrow and the body pear-shaped. The handle has an almost right-angled curvature and the cross-section is ribbon-shaped. The background is missing. The paste is beige. The decoration, painted in garnet red, covers almost the entire exterior of the piece. In the part of the rim we observe toothed decoration and in the handle, horizontal stripes. In the body we find five horizontal bands of different sizes. From top to bottom there are: a "sigma" decoration; one of stretched "esses" and below them intersecting semicircular arches; left-flying birds with long beaks, necks and wings; a fret with pointed angles and in the last conserved band, ivy leaves. According to Ignasi Garcés (2020), it is an exceptional piece that would have been produced in the south of what is now Catalonia or Valencia. The MNAT preserves a piece of the same chronology, also with the same series of birds, found in the forum of the city of Tarraco. It seems that they are swans, which suggests that they could be two pieces made in the same workshop. The pieces must have arrived by sea through the coastal trade promoted by Italic agents in the 2nd-1st centuries BC. These decorations with bands and series of geometric, plant and animal motifs can also be found in Elche, Lleida and Menorca.

Omeka ID 1924