The Baltic Ceramic Market c. 1200-1600: Hanseatic Trade and Cultural Exchange

This study concerns an analysis of multivariate data collected during an archaeological survey of the Hanseatic ceramic market in the Baltic between c. 1200 and 1600. The archaeological distribution of imported ceramic wares forms not only a measure of commercial and technological exchange between western Europe and Scandinavia, Fennoscandia and the eastern Baltic region but also of the spread of Hanseatic domestic practices to communities living on the very edge of the European cultural orbit, particularly in the spheres of dining ritual, heating technology and interior decoration. In view of their short lifespan and survival in the ground, imported ceramics and their contexts have the potential to provide a uniquely quantifiable index of cultural exchange to the region. The plotting of certain luxury products and the compositional comparison of urban mercantile to feudal castle assemblages, injects a vertical dimension into the equation, identifying potential elite patterns of consumption. By contrast, although one of the four international trading outposts of the Hansa or Kontore with its own permanent settlement of western European traders, detailed analysis of atypically polarised ceramic distributions within the city of Novgorod on the edge of the Russian pine forest zone offers a case-study of cultural resistance in the archaeological record.

All the key methodological and analytical objectives have been fulfilled:

• Completion of a comprehensive multivariate database in ACCESS of 3145 records of assemblages and individual finds from Hanseatic towns, castle and shipwreck sites around the Baltic littoral. Covering nine countries (Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Russia, the Baltic States, Poland and Germany), the database comprises sortable fields on sites and their function, context date, assemblage composition, ceramic ware-type, form, function, design and publication history.

• Advanced drafting of illustrated monograph text with comprehensive type-series, tables, graphs and black and white photographs of key finds.

• Identification of technological exchange between western Europe and the Baltic littoral through identification of (i) centres of Low Countries-style lead-glazed red earthenware production in eastern Denmark and northern Germany during the mid 13th to mid-14th centuries through plotting of production waste distributions and laboratory-based chemical analysis with implications for the migration of specialist workshops from western Europe into the Baltic zone and (ii) centres of North German-style earthenware stove-tile production in Scandinavia and Fennoscandia during the 15th to 16th centuries through archaeological waste and mould distributions with implications for the migration of specialist workshops from the European Continent into the western and northern Baltic.

• Analysis of distributions of relief-applied and moulded iconographic wares (stonewares and earthenware stove-tiles) as indices of cultural, political and religious exchange between Northern Germany and the Baltic during the 15th and 16th centuries: eg. transformation from late Gothic-style devotional forms and designs to visual propaganda of Luthern Reformation and new secular authorities.

• Discussion of horizontal and vertical networks in Hanseatic ceramic market in the Baltic c. 1200-1600 focussing on the spread and adoption of western European domestic habitus, cultural and ethnic loyalties amongst expatriate mercantile populations and on class distinction and social competition amongst consumers.