Lecture·Archaeological Research Unit - University of Cyprus·2019
The Archaeology of Ottomanisation in the Balkans: Belgrade between the 15th and 17th Centuries
The Archaeology of Ottomanisation in the Balkans: Belgrade between the 15th-17th centuries
A guest lecture in the University of Cyprus series on a subject outside Cyprus.
Chapters
About the lecture
In this lecture for the Archaeological Research Unit, Jelena Živković of the Cyprus Institute presents her doctoral research on ceramic production and consumption in Belgrade between the 15th and 17th centuries. She examines how archaeology and material science can move the study of Ottomanisation in the Balkans beyond art-historical models of elite architecture and nationalist historiographies that treat Ottoman heritage as foreign.
Belgrade was a Hungarian frontier stronghold before its Ottoman conquest in 1521. Ottoman tax registers record initial depopulation followed by Muslim settlement in the fortress and Christian, Jewish and Gypsy communities in the extramural town, including Dorćol. Pottery consumption shifted accordingly: 15th-century assemblages of plain coarse cooking pots gave way in the 16th and 17th centuries to monochrome glazed and slip-glazed tableware.
Živković analysed around 270 samples at UCL Qatar and the Fitch Laboratory of the British School at Athens using ceramic petrography, wavelength-dispersive XRF and scanning electron microscopy. In the 15th century, two local fabrics of sedimentary clay were used for unglazed cooking and stove pots, one distributed inside the fortress and the other outside. After 1521, a single local fabric of micaceous, low-calcareous clay was used with fast-wheel modelling, four slip recipes, lead-silica glazes and double firing; in the 17th century, grey polished jugs and calcite-tempered cooking pots marked with crosses also appeared.
Živković argues that incoming potters brought this technological package after 1521 while exchanging knowledge with local artisans: across all three centuries, clays came from the same zone around Avala Mountain, 15 kilometres south of Belgrade, and 16th-century workshops initially glazed 15th-century vessel shapes. The discussion afterwards covers Ottoman monument preservation, copper cooking vessels and metalware imitations, and languages spoken in Belgrade.