Great and Little Traditions in medieval Petra and Shawbak (Jordan): contextualizing local building industry and pottery production in cc. 12-13

The main aim of this work is to provide an example of integrated use of recent achievements from historical-archaeological and anthropological-archaeological research, in order to better understand material and non-material constraints underlying local production processes in medieval Petra-Shawbak region of Jordan, in Crusader-Ayyubid age. The methodological basis of this contribution relies primarily on archaeology of production (Mannoni Giannichedda 2003), on stratigraphic archaeology of buildings (Brogiolo and Cagnana 2012), on Oystein La Bianca’s studies of Great and Little Traditions of Jordan (La Bianca 2007, 2011) and on Giovanna Bianchi’s study on the transfer of technical knowledge in medieval building sites in Italy (Bianchi 1996). Concepts from cultural anthropology, when used, are taken from the works of Giulio Angioni (1984 for the definition of “technical objective”), Helene Balfet (1981 for the definition of “technical environment”) and André Leroi-Gourhan (tr. It 1994 for the definition of “technical tendency”). Besides, the contribution elaborates on the most recent results of architectural and ceramic studies carried out by the Italian Archaeological Mission in Petra and Shawbak (running from 1986 to present), in order to lay-out a scheme of interaction between external and local know-hows in the frame of the considered production processes.