The themes of these sessions are based on the absence of a consensus within the scientific community about some issues that could be approached from different points of view. Similarly, these activities aim to analyze and generalize the recent advances in the techniques of study and research on the subject of this congress: ceramics; and avoid a stagnant theme, based on classic and conservative methods of material studies. These, although necessary in an investigation, still do not solve issues as important as the right methodology to be implemented, morpho-typological classifications, the graphical representation, the new technologies in data processing, etc.; without which, it is supposed to change the research method used, the reading of the archaeological remains contextualized in the site, supplemented by the information contained in written sources as well as any information useful for research, such as statistics, iconography, etc.

T.1- CORPUS DESCRIPTIO FIGLINAE

There is currently no universal standard on the presentation of drawings of archaeological pottery, in fact, depending on the geographic areas or cultural traditions, several schools have been developed, so much so that we can talk about a German school, an Anglo-Saxon and a French one. So far, studies on archaeological materials have focused on theoretical and technical details of the design without giving special attention to key features such as their manufacture process (by hand, wheel, mold, etc.).

This lack of standardized criteria to clearly and precisely define each view, section, or outline, is what leads us to propose this thematic session. The main purpose of it is to define and agree on some RULES, as is the case for the Industrial or Technical drawing - DIN RULE (UNE) -, in the drawing of the pottery pieces in Archeology, with the aim of identifying characteristic graphical features for each ceramic. Hence, to allow the subsequent objective identification, of each item or specific feature.

The procedure will first contemplate a critical analysis of the different patterns of representation or drawing of ceramics today. Define the elements and normalize features: views, sections, axes, inscriptions, decoration, pastes, etc. And the themes of these sessions are based on the absence of a consensus within the scientific community about some issues that could be approached from different points of view. Similarly, these activities aim to analyze and generalize the recent advances in the techniques of study and research on the subject of this congress: ceramics; and avoid a stagnant theme, based on classic and conservative methods of material studies. These, although necessary in an investigation, still do not solve issues as important as the right methodology to be implemented, morpho-typological classifications, the graphical representation, the new technologies in data processing, etc.; without which, it is supposed to change the research method used, the reading of the archaeological remains contextualized in the site, supplemented by the information contained in written sources as well as any information useful for research, such as statistics, iconography, etc. and, finally, the development of a proposal accompanied by practical examples for each group or family of ceramics: hand, wheel, mold, etc..

It seems necessary to, at least, undertake and address a joint project to consolidate and standardize the criteria of graphical representations of ceramics through computer software, without intending to "beautify" the reality of it. Thus, this session aims to open a gap in the complicated world of archaeological ceramic drawers and bring our stances closer.

T.2. FIGULI ET SIGILLA IN THE CERAMICS

Although it has been decided to use latin terms to label this thematic session, they do not necessarily refer exclusively to Antiquity, as the art of making baked clay pots and marking them was born much earlier, as the archaeological remains present since prehistoric times witness it. An era that will challenge the experts on the subject, such as how to understand the organizational framework of prehistoric societies around this craft.

The molding of the ceramic by hand and mold has been known since prehistory and, although the potter's wheel is known since 4000 BC in the Middle East, the manufacturing processes described above are still used in later times, although the first to a lesser extent. The arrival of the potter's wheel to the Iberian Peninsula takes place with the Phoenicians, becoming generalized with the arrival of the Romans. A craft that was still in use, without much change, for later times until the Industrial Revolution, in the second half of the eighteenth century, where the concept of labor and economics changed radically in those more developed societies.

The ante cocturam marks have been traditionally identified, grosso modo , as signals or signs to control production, i.e., of trading or commercial character. Even if there are many years of research on these ideas, few strong conclusions have been drawn; it was not even possible to establish whether it corresponded to a control or accounting system. Possible meanings of these signals are not without controversy, some researchers associate them with the internal organization of the atelier, either to control or account for production of the vessels in the ante cocturam processes, and others with marks of ownership.

Figulus ( figlinus or figulinus ) in Antiquity was the one who worked the clay, therefore, the potter, figlinum was also the work of the figulus , and the figlinum was also the site of raw material extraction. In Roman times, the big industry of figlinae made references to a series of workshops ( officinae , stationes , and rationes in the late-antique) where manipulation and baking of the clay took place. The figlinae were classified according to the ceramic production: opus doliare (building materials and dolia ) and the opus figlinum applied to ceramic art.

Seals, stamps, marks, etc., seem fundamental to the knowledge of pottery production and all that it entails. In Antiquity, the seal is the proof of identity, is the sign or signum and the signature that identifies an object before its spreading, although this already happens in societies that lack writing, it is enough to recall the many cylinder seal series in Mesopotamia that are in circulation from the fourth millennium BC onwards. The sigillum (diminutive of the latin signum , sfraghìs in Greek) arises from the requirement and the practice of marking a product, as well as the link between the manufacture and the maker. For this reason, their classification and study will help understand the areas of production, dissemination and penetration along the grounds of economic history. Post-Antiquity studies are far from what has been done for other periods because the research has been more focused on the sumptuous museum collections and on analytical ceramological methods such as typologies, classifications and chronologies.

In sum, the labels and marks of potters return us important data on production. Ceramic, throughout its history, has been very sensitive to the cultural, economic, social or other changes. This was reflected in their manufacture, so this session, will not only attempt to go beyond what has been done so far, but will aspire to know who's behind the manufacturing, the meaning of their symbols, etc., as well as understand the fabric of the craft of modeling clay from its beginnings to the post-antiquity.

T.3. THE METHOD AS A MEAN AND NOT AS AN END

The typological classification, "the workhorse of ceramologists" aims to distinguish not only the different production groups, its styles and functionality but also its distribution and activity areas for direct and/or indirect use.

Archeology employs a series of techniques and methods for studying the archaeological evidence and approach past societies. The application of such techniques involves the formation of a methodological body or, in other words, of some tools and strategic techniques of research in order to cover a series of questions and objectives.

In our discipline, in the specific case of ceramic studies, the typological approach remains the most widely used, given its ability to infer a variety of information based on the similarity and difference. However, in recent decades we have seen an explosion of methods and techniques, incorporated from other fields of study, that have opened the range of questions and answers, as well as different theoretical frameworks in which to insert the above methodology. Yet too often we use a previously existing typology, which is not submitted to criticism, or a different technique of analysis without a corresponding theoretical approach nor the existence of clear and concise objectives. Furthermore, many works devote almost its entire effort to the construction, development and subsequent implementation of the methodological tool, relegating the interpretation to a short section, with the consequences that it entails.

In this regard, this session aims to be a space for reflection on many aspects of ceramic studies that are currently underway, starting with the basic idea that neither the artefact nor the method constitutes the end of our research. Thus, it proposes a set of essential points that will guide the session and the discussion, which are:

- Reflection and critique of classification systems and ordering of ceramic artifacts.

- Creation of formal categories as units of analysis and problems that arise when such entities are processed and interconnected, among themselves and with the rest of the archaeological record.

- Limits and possibilities of the application of a typological approach as a method of spatial-temporal organization of the pottery remains.

- Selection of features and properties to become analytical variables.

- Exposure and assessment of new methodological lines of research.

- The need (or not) of any previous theoretical assumptions for the employed methodology.

- Sighting of human actions, individual and/or collectively, through material objects, specifically ceramics.

- Examples of ways of approaching economic, political, social and cultural aspects of past human communities through ceramic materials.

- Interpretation of obtained data.

T.4. "THE PEOPLE AND THE VESSELS": APPROACHES FROM ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY, TRACEOLOGY AND EXPERIMENTAL ARCHEOLOGY

Archeology has been recently redefined as the discipline that studies the relationship between people and things through the ages and in all places. From this perspective, this session seeks to address different case studies relating to the way humans interact with the ceramics.

These relations are marked by various technological and cultural aspects, which have in functionality an important meeting point. Their analysis allows us to approach crucial issues to a better understanding of preindustrial societies.

However, the traditional development of ceramic studies, especially in recent prehistory and the classical world, has been subordinated to the need for chronological tools, focusing on typological or morphological aspects. This subservient perspective of ceramic and material culture studies in general has involved an essentially descriptive approach, confining or ignoring those aspects that could better illustrate the social relationship of pottery with the members of communities that produced, used and finally discarded it.

The historiographic importance of ceramic studies, especially in historical times, has not been accompanied by a broad development of studies focusing on the social life of these pieces. However, under pre-industrial societies, ceramics had a great importance, mainly as containers of food substances. But the significance of the ceramics and objects of the past is not limited to its link to the survival of human groups, but also as a part of the cultural phenomena that regulated the redistribution and consumption of these substances, and that, on some occasions, served as articulators of social relations.

Inserted into living cultural contexts, these ceramics acquired a social history that is independent of its value as an archaeological indicator. Their study can also help us characterize the development of possible pre and post-depositional processes that affect the inference arising from the inclusion of ceramic elements in the formation of the archaeological record, helping to redefine its chronological value as a temporal structural element of a particular stratigraphic sequence.

At the same time, the study of the production sequences required for the manufacture of ceramics can be used as an effective study tool for the characterization of the technological means at the disposal of human groups in the past. At the same time, other issues related to production, such as obtaining raw materials or modeling and cooking tasks, can be analyzed as economic and social indicators.

These and other avenues of pottery studies in archaeological contexts have been explored from different perspectives and schools (anthropological, material culture studies, archaeometrical, experimental, etc.). But while chronotypological studies hold a certain epistemological unit, the interpretative horizon that we just drew is primarily characterized by methodological diversity. So, this session aims to reflect some of the latest developments in the context of current research as a framework for a critical discussion on possible avenues of collaboration between different forms of research.

T.5. POTTERY AND THE APPLICATION OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES FOR ITS STUDY

These technologies, despite having the adjective "new" have been used for some years in the field of Archeology. In recent years, the archaeological work associated with new technologies is increasing, with the proliferation of new systems of computer analysis and programs that process visual or statistical data, computer software that is able to create interfaces that adapt to the planimetry of an excavation by georeferencing pottery at the site of its discovery, or programs that reconstruct the pottery in 3D, etc., to name just a few of the countless applications. Similarly, its application to material remains, in this case ceramic, can optimize not only time but also provide, in real time, data on consumption, production, etc., from ceramic studies done elsewhere in the world. One of the latest contributions is the Geostatistics applied to archeology and, specifically, the archaeological remains of pottery, which provides an effective and practical tool to explain the spatial and temporal continuity. This model is based on spatial statistics and is conditioned by the spatial variability, decoding the mechanical behavior of physical and social space: "archaeological space". A principle by which the distribution of each sample, the pottery (pieces or units), is associated with a spatial position, thus, the change of the values of the variable depends on its location; making a spatial-temporal delimitation of an action or group of actions on the base of a certain fraction of its material remains, in this case ceramics; fossil-guide that suggests a dynamic system shaped by the functional, temporal, spatial, cultural (the persistence of past cultural traits pasts) variability, etc., through a series of causal actions. Finally, we should include the latest developments regarding the models of archaeometrical characterization in ceramic production, as well as diversity in their analytical techniques, creating a proper environment for the evaluation of its scope and limitations and to distinguish in which situations can the technical analysis be used in.

These and many other applications will take place in this session that seeks to bring closer the world of computing to the scientific community, researchers, academics, as well as show the different avenues of application that entails data processing.

CERAMIC STUDIES FOR TIMES

Since the emergence of the earliest ceramic vessels in the dawn of the Neolithic, they have become one of the key artefacts of both prehistoric and historical cultures.

The pottery appears, at the start, to meet specific daily needs and, because of them, certain shapes and sizes of containers appear. But it does not solely satisfy basic consumption needs since the ceramic vessels are also within the framework of the mechanisms of production, storage, trade and play a social role to serve certain ideological and ritual purposes, such as special events, of social prestige, and magic-religious or funerary manifestations.

The jars, both in its formal and stylistic aspects, are products of aesthetic tastes and traditions specific to certain groups or individuals. However, one vessel may also have different functions, so it will really be the archaeological context in which they are located the key that will bring us the true function it had for those groups that produced and/or used them.

As a well-preserved perishable material, they have come to play a major role in archaeological studies, especially in the stages at which the stone loses its hegemony in the manufacture of tools. This has led us to consider the presence of certain vessels as a differentiating factor of cultures and peoples, and some historiographic trends even consider that certain changes in the pottery traditions are the result of the arrival of new settlers to the area.

For a better exposure of the research on the characteristics that pottery vessels display and their relation to the context, and given the wide time frame that they may include (from Prehistory to the present), this thematic section will be further divided into several sections.

Firstly, the sections outlined below are expected, which does not prevent that, as participants make their proposals of communication, they are enlarged.

E.1. Ceramics in Prehistory

E.2. Ceramics in Protohistory

E.3. Ceramics in Classical Antiquity

E.4. Ceramics in Late Antiquity

E.5. Christian Medieval and Muslim Ceramics / Modern Ceramics