Pottery in the Iron Age in the Basque Country: La ceramica de la Edad del Hierro en el País Vasco

This doctoral thesis is a study of the development of pottery production in the communities of the Second Iron Age that settled in what is now the area encompassing the Basque Country. Three sites, Los Castros de Lastra, Basagain and Munoaundi, are fortified settlements on hilltops, while Santiagomendi is an unfortified settlement and the fortified settlement of La Hoya is located on a plain, with a highly developed urban area. As a starting point, a comprehensive and integrated approach was sought to bring together a typological and morphological approach towards the collections, including decorative aspects as well as an assessment of the technological and functional standards of the pieces. To this end, as a theoretical basis, the concept of chaîne opératoire has been employed as a theoretical framework, within which different methods of approaching the pottery including morphological study, macroscopic description, archaeometry, experimental archaeology and ethnoarchaeological coverage.