Pingsdorf pottery

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Range of shapes of Pingsdorf ceramics from the first excavations at the pottery village of Pingsdorf (Koenen 1898)

Pingsdorfer Keramik is a type of ceramic that was produced between the late 9th and 13th centuries in various pottery centers on the eastern edge of the Rhenish foothills . This is also where their eponymous place of manufacture, Pingsdorf , is located , which to this day has produced the largest and most varied amount of finds of this genus. Vessels of the Pingsdorf goods were mostly formed on the fast rotating potter's wheel . Characteristic is a fine sand gemagerter tone and paint from iron bearing on the surface dark protruding clay slip ( engobe -Bemalung).

In a broader sense, medieval archeology uses “Pingsdorfer Ware” to refer to a horizon of high-quality, engobe-painted fine ceramics that were manufactured in a wide geographical area in the High Middle Ages. This stretches from central and northern France via Belgium , the Netherlands and Luxembourg to the Lower Rhine , the Cologne Bay , the Middle Rhine area and the lower Main . Further east, the production of related ceramics continues via Westphalia , North Hesse and South Lower Saxony to Saxony . Quite independent, late foothills appear on the middle Neckar . The individual production sites are each characterized by their individual formal and technological proximity or distance to the eponymous location of Pingsdorf . Overall, a Europe-wide west-east transfer of the technology and style complex of the Pingsdorf goods from the 8th to the 14th century is proven.

Pingsdorf goods in the true sense of the word ( ie from the Rhenish foothills) can be archaeologically proven at countless medieval settlement sites in Central and Northwest Europe. Their shares in the ceramic inventories range from well over 50% in the vicinity of the production facilities to individual finds on the periphery of the trading room. Overall, this type of ceramic is a very important "time marker" for Central and Northern European medieval archeology, not least because of the internal chronological structure of its four centuries that has been confirmed many times over .

Production sites

Well-known production sites for Pingsdorf goods and related types of ceramics from Rhenish ceramics along the foothills of the mountains include Pingsdorf and numerous other places near Brühl such as Badorf and Walberberg, as well as Liblar , Wildenrath , Langerwehe and Jüngersdorf , Meckenheim , Urbar on the Middle Rhine. In addition, the Pingsdorf goods were also manufactured in Siegburg during the early production phase. For the Lower Rhine, the southern Limburg Schinveld and Brunssum deserve special mention. In Paffrath , moderately hard gray goods were produced at the same time, the stylistic allusions to the Pingsdorf goods, but whose spectrum mainly includes cookware.

Along the Rhenish foothill threshold, there are low-iron clays close to the surface, which are ideally suited for the manufacture of vascular ceramics. These clay deposits are related to the Rhenish lignite mining area. Apart from the outcrops along the foothill threshold, these clays also strike geological fault zones on the Lower Rhine.

In addition to the availability of suitable clays, the availability of fuel (forest) and access to trade routes were decisive for the development of a successful pottery site in the Middle Ages.

Form development and dissemination

Pingsdorfer Becher (12th century),
Museum Burg Linn
Jug of the Pingsdorfer Ware (12th century)

An unbroken tradition of fine ceramics manufacture seems to have existed on the Rhenish foothills since the late Roman period. In the early Middle Ages , the so-called Badorf ceramics were made here. This unpainted, light foothill goods with roller stamp decoration was additionally provided with red engobe painting since the late 9th century. This late Carolingian, painted Badorf ware is divided into a group of Hunneschans ceramics decorated and painted with roller stamps , some of which are already relatively fine-grained, and a second group with red finger-stroke painting, but with a fine, chalky surface.

The Pingsdorfer Ware presents itself as a further development from the painted Badorf ware, which established itself as an independent group from the late 9th century. It is characterized by a sandpaper-like surface, which results from leaning with fine sand. Bulbous pots and mugs as well as jugs and early forms of stove tiles dominate the group . The early Pingsdorf vessels still have the wobbly bottom typical of Badorf, which is now stabilized by a wave base.

In the almost 400-year period in which Pingsdorf goods were manufactured, the range of shapes seems to have hardly undergone any noteworthy changes. So far, however, there are only sparsely stratified finds that could secure a detailed chronology. In general, however, there has been a development from light, smooth-walled twisted vessels to harder fired, darker grooved vessels, which in turn are replaced by vessels with clearly carved out rotating grooves. The change to the grooved shapes took place in the late 12th century.

So far, a chronological sequence could not be conclusively proven only on the basis of the painting. Red brushstroke patterns occur in all periods of the Pingsdorf goods. Grid patterns do not seem to appear until the 12th century. The red painting was gradually abandoned in the late phase at the end of the 12th century.

Around 1200, shortly before the Pingsdorf goods went out of fashion, the range of shapes was supplemented by the cylinder neck jug and the cylinder neck jug.

Vessels made of Pingsdorf ceramics were traded in the Middle Ages via the Rhine trade route to England, Scandinavia and the Netherlands. As hard-burnt earthenware, it was the most suitable type of goods as a transport container for consumer goods from the Rhineland. The Pingsdorf goods were less widespread up the Rhine.

At the beginning of the 13th century, the hard-fired earthenware was replaced by vessels made of proto-stoneware.

The classification of a canteen from Zelzate found in 1949, which was buried between 870 and 880 together with a Carolingian coin hoard, is controversial in research . This find is often mentioned in the older literature as the oldest dated vessel from the spectrum of the Pingsdorf group. In the meantime, however, the Zelzate canteen is assigned to the painted Carolingian ceramics of the Badorf type. Today, a coin treasure vessel from Wermelskirchen , which dates to around 960, is generally regarded as the oldest absolutely chronologically dated vessel in the Pingsdorf range.

Research history

At the end of the 19th century Constantin Koenen dealt scientifically with ceramics from Pingsdorf for the first time . In 1898 Koenen carried out the first systematic excavation in a pottery complex in the courtyard of the Klein inn in Brühl-Pingsdorf. He described an 80 m³ cullet store that contained around a dozen different vessel shapes. The publication of this excavation in the Bonn yearbooks was for a long time - until the work of Markus Sanke - the most type-rich overview of the Pingsdorf range of shapes. Koenen's work led to the naming of this type of ceramic, which is already found elsewhere, as "Pingsdorf goods".

In 1927 Franz Rademacher attempted a chronology of medieval ceramics, which was based on an art-historical consideration of the vessel ware. He classified the red-painted Pingsdorf goods in the Carolingian period, distinguishing them from ceramic vessels from the Ottonian period. Rademacher designated as Ottonian, unpainted, strongly grooved earthen vessels.

Archaeological studies of Dutch settlement sites in the Middle Ages put Rademacher's approach to art history into perspective in the 1930s. Wouter C. Braat saw a development of the Pingsdorf goods in the successor of the Hunneschans ceramics and assumed that the Pingsdorf goods would start around 900. Furthermore, Braat postulated an expiry around 1200.

The creek bed stratigraphy of the systematic excavation of the Viking settlement Haithabu on the Schlei from 1930 to 1939 proved to be important for the chronological classification of the Pingsdorf goods. While the Badorf ceramics are still represented in the oldest horizons of the site, this is around or shortly after 900 by the Pingsdorfers Ceramic replaced, which then remains archaeologically detectable there until the 13th century. A fine stratigraphy of individual vessel types could not be carried out using the material found in Haithabu.

In the period that followed, there were numerous individual publications from various sources. In 1975 Beckmann presented a seriation of the finds from Siegburger Aulgasse, but concentrated only on the complete vessels found during the excavation. In 2002 Markus Sanke published for the first time an overview of the Pingsdorf range of forms, independent of the location.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Janssen 1983, pp. 353-373.
  2. ↑ On painted late Carolingian goods: Wilhelm Winkelmann: Meschede. In: Westfälische Forschungen 19, 1966. S. 135 f. Ders .: Everything hollow sounds better. In: Kölner Römer-Illustrierte 2, 1975. P. 233 f.
  3. ↑ Friedrich 2002, p. 225 f.
  4. ↑ Friedrich 1988, p. 278 ff.
  5. ↑ Janssen 1968, p. 200 ff.
  6. ^ Paul Naster: Trouvailles de monnaies carolingiennes à Zelzate (1949). In: Revue belge de numismatique et de sigillographie. 96, 1950, pp. 208-224.
  7. ↑ Friedrich 2002, p. 214.
  8. ↑ Lobbedey 1968, p. 123; Friedrich 2002, p. 214.
  9. ↑ Koenen 1898.
  10. ^ Franz Rademacher: Carolingian ceramics on the Lower Rhine . In: Altes Kunsthandwerk 5, 1927, pp. 173–180.
  11. ↑ Wouter C. Braat: findings of medieval ceramics in the Netherlands and their dating. In: Bonner Jahrbücher 142, 1937, pp. 157–176.
  12. ↑ Hübener 1959, pp. 122-132.

literature

  • Kurt Böhner : Early medieval pottery kilns in Walberberg and Pingsdorf. In: Bonner Jahrbücher 155/156, 1956, pp. 372–385.
  • Reinhard Friedrich: A chronologically significant group of cups from Pingsdorf goods. In: David Gaimster, Mark Redknap, Hans-Helmut Wegner: On ceramics of the Middle Ages and the early modern times in the Rhineland. Medieval and later pottery from the Rhineland and his markets. BAR International Series 440, Oxford 1988, pp. 271-297.
  • Reinhard Friedrich: Medieval ceramics from Rhenish moths. Rhenish excavations Volume 44. Cologne 2002, pp. 213–227.
  • Andreas Heege: The ceramics of the early and high Middle Ages from the Rhineland. Holos, Bonn 1995, p. 82 ff.
  • Wolfgang Hübener : On the expansion of some Franconian ceramic groups to Northern and Central Europe in the 9th – 12th centuries. Century. In: Archaeologia Geographica Volume 2, Hamburg 1951, pp. 105 ff.
  • Wolfgang Hübener: The ceramics from Haithabu. Excavations in Haithabu 2, Neumünster 1959.
  • Walter Janssen : Production district for medieval ceramics in Brühl-Pingsdorf. Rheinische Ausgrabungen 76. Cologne 1977, pp. 133-138.
  • Walter Janssen: The imported ceramics from Haithabu. Excavations in Haithabu 9. Neumünster 1987.
  • Antonius Jürgens: News on an old topic. Robbery excavations in pottery centers in the Rhineland. In: Werner Lichtwark, Friederike Lichtwark [Hrsg.]: On the regionality of ceramics in the Middle Ages and modern times. Contributions to the 26th International Pottery Symposium, Soest 5. – 9. October 1993. Preservation of monuments and research in Westphalia Volume 32. Bonn 1996. pp. 27–35.
  • Constantin Koenen : Carolingian-Franconian pottery near Pingsdorf. In: Bonner Jahrbücher 103, 1898, pp. 115–122 panel VI.
  • Uwe Lobbedey: Investigations of medieval ceramics mainly from southwest Germany. Work on early medieval research 3. Berlin 1968.
  • Hartwig Lüdtke : The medieval pottery of Schleswig. Excavations shield 1971-1975. Excavations in Schleswig. Reports and studies 4. Neumünster 1985, p. 60 ff.
  • Hartwig Lüdtke: The Bryggen Pottery. Introduction and Pingsdorf Ware. The Bryggen Papers Volume 4. Oslo, 1989.
  • Markus Sanke: Yellow earthenware. In: Hartwig Lüdtke, Kurt Schietzel (Hrsg.): Handbook on medieval ceramics in Northern Europe . Wachholtz, Neumünster 2001, pp. 271-428. ISBN 3-529-01818-X (= writings of the Archaeological State Museum Schleswig 6).
  • Markus Sanke: The medieval ceramic production in Brühl-Pingsdorf. Technology - typology - chronology. Zabern, Mainz 2002, ISBN 3-8053-2878-8 (= Rhenish excavations 50).

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