Potters at the World’s End? Pottery Production and Resilience in Formentera (Balearic Islands, Spain) during the Bronze Age

Abstract

Human communities that inhabit small islands often express some kind of fragility and ‘islandness’ that requires the development of certain strategies to minimize the risks involved in occupying hazardous environments. In this paper, we interpret the technological choices developed by Bronze Age potters’ communities from the small island of Formentera (Balearic Islands, Spain) by studying certain features of pottery pastes and some typological aspects of the vessels. Our aim is to explore the way certain technological choices played a key role in the construction of group social memory, the strengthening of community cohesion and the establishment of bonds with other groups from the same island and from other nearby and larger islands of the archipelago. The technological practices observed in pottery production allowed a greater capacity for resilience in the human communities from Formentera, which in turn permitted the stable and long-term occupation of the territory.