Abstract:

Some examples of urns in calcite alabaster come from the territory between Cádiz (ancient Gades/Gadir) and Sevilla (ancient Hispalis), once within the province of Hispania Ulterior Baetica, an area historically at the centre of intense cultural and trade networks. Little is known of their contexts of provenance, but their production and use find direct parallels in other examples found elsewhere in the Roman empire. This paper presents and discusses these urns from a wider comparative, diachronic perspective. The Iberian examples, which include some ‘recycled’ vases, are enlightening as they reveal aspects on their production as well as on the recycling of material culture and its dynamics in the early Imperial period. The evidence shows that the selection and display of these urns in Baetica oscillate between tradition and innovation, ascribable to the persistence of ‘ancestral customs’, on the one hand; on the other, to the openness of this area to artistic fashions and trends from Italy and the Mediterranean.