The objective of this work is to present a first classification of the early medieval pottery production in Tortosa, between 7th and 10th centuries. This record come from two years of archaeological fieldwork carried out in the southern Catalan territories, as well as the review of the museum collections. Pottery productions are one of the key factors in historical research, due to its own abundance in archaeological sites. They can provide valuable information about the chronology and social organisation of archaeological sites as well as a better understanding of territorial dynamics. Despite the limitations of survey methods in order to study pottery productions, most of them not linked to an archaeological context, we tried to establish a preliminary study scheme. Lacking previous works, it was necessary this first classification for the purpose of provide a useful guide to help in the large amount of archaeological excavations carried out in Tortosa’s region. Beyond its practical application, the influence of this record in the knowledge of al-Andalus Islamisation process is analysed throughout the text.Keywords:

The interpretative power of quantitative intra-site spatial analysis has long been recognised by archaeologists. On the contrary, very few ethnoarchaeological works have engaged with the statistical analysis of intra-site pattern of artefacts and ecofacts. Nonetheless, ethnoarchaeology is uniquely placed to guide and assist in the identification of sound techniques and in the development of the methodology of analysis. The possibility to directly connect the distribution of the proxies under study with the activity that generated such distribution, provide the means of fine-tuning the tools we use for identifying these patterns in the archaeological record. As a consequence, archaeological methodology and interpretation both benefit from the application of improved methodologies. In this paper we review some of the most common techniques used to analyse activity areas and we provide examples of the application of such techniques to ethnoarchaeological contexts. The aim is to assess how archaeology can benefit from the intra-site spatial analysis of ethnoarchaeological contexts.

Maps representing the distribution of chemical residues over anthropogenic floors are the main diagnostic tools used by archaeologists for addressing the identification of geochemical signatures of past actions. Geostatistics allows producing these maps from a sample of locations by modelling the spatial autocorrelation structure of these kind of phenomena. However, the homogeneity of the prediction regions is a strong assumption in the model. The presence of barriers, such as the inner walls of domestic units, introduces discontinuities in prediction areas. In this paper, we investigate how to incorporate information of a geographical nature into the process of geostatistical prediction. We propose the use of cost-based distances to quantify the correlation between locations, a solution which has proved to be a practical alternative approach for archaeological intrasite analysis. The cost-based approach produces more reliable results avoiding the unrealistic assumption of the homogeneity of the study area. As a working example, a case study of the distribution of two specific chemical signatures in domestic floors is presented within a controlled ethnographical context in Northern Gujarat (India). On a broad disciplinary scale, the benefits of using our approach include improved estimates in regions with complex geometry and lower uncertainty in the kriging predictions.This work was supported by SimulPast Consolider Ingenio project (CSD2010-00034) and Experimentation and development of advanced artificial intelligence techniques for the computer simulation of social dynamics and historical evolution project (HAR2009-12258), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Joan Negre Pérez has worked on this research on a postdoctoral fellowship from the Argentinian Ministry of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation (PICT2012-2148) and partially funded by research grant 2008UAB503 from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain). Facundo Muñoz has worked on this research on a postdoctoral fellowship from the French National Institute for Agricultural Research and partially funded by research grant MTM2013-42323-P from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and ACOMP/2015/202 from Generalitat Valenciana (Spain). Carla Lancelotti is part of the CaSEs Research Group, a recognised excellence group of the Generalitat de Catalunya (SGR2014-1417). Her work in this paper is partially conducted within the framework of the MoMarq Project (Modelado y Simulación de Marcadores de Actividades Antrópicas: de lo etnográfico a lo arqueológico) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (HAR2014-55518-P)

Pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) is the most widely cultivated millet in Africa and India but has not yet been identified in Europe, while the earliest remains of sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) are attested in Italy in the fifth century AD. This paper presents evidence that pearl millet was introduced to Iberia during the 11th–12th centuries AD. This is the first documented evidence for this African crop in Europe. Sorghum, on the other hand, appears as a later introduction (14th century AD) in Iberia. We present archaeobotanical data from eight Andalusi sites in Valencia and Andalucía (southern Iberia) where both crops have been found. We have also examined medieval textual data where references to pearl millet appeared to be absent, and we conclude that the word “dacsa”, currently used to refer to sorghum, should be understood as a reference to pearl millet. From the 16th century onwards, this term was given to maize, when the American cereal replaced the African millets.