ABSTRACT
If the previous chapter showed that sigillata has not always been a standardized, homogeneous category in its practices of study, this chapter will extend the same argument to its past practices of production. It will trace the contingent processes leading to the emergence of terra sigillata as a standardized category at the main production site of the 2nd century AD, Lezoux. Instead of a retrospective story of the replacement of one type with well-defined attributes by another, the evolution of ceramic production becomes a situated alignment of practices, skills, and relations. This reframes both the history of Lezoux and the economic models brought to bear on it. But it also has more far-reaching consequences for sigillata’s historical role. The historical specificity of sigillata’s standardisation and homogeneity is already hinted at by the marked contrast with the ceramics described in the prequel to this chapter. Finally, as a result of its situated ‘category-ness’ established at Lezoux, sigillata facilitated competition, and shaped a specific trajectory of distribution and consumption, to be explored in the following chapters.
