Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2008)
DÉNES GABLER AND ANDRÁS MÁRTON: Head-Pots in the Antiquities Collection
products were therefore only wealdy connected to the pottery types found at El Aouja. Lamps from similar clay were also found at Henchir es-S rira (Tunisia) where waste deposits from a potter's workshop were also found which contained both lamps and terra sigillata chiara vases/ 9 The lamp-makers of the Severan period were probably, therefore the forerunners of the craftsman who belonged to Navigius' circle. This earlier ceramic production took place in Henchir es-Srira which means that, if our assumption is correct, we can gain a foothold for the work of localising Navigius' workshop. Chemical analysis shows that Navigius' pottery too belongs to a reference-group defined by the lamps from Henchir es-Srira: his workshop can therefore be localised to this place in central Tunisia. 80 The decoration of the later lamps made at Henchir es-Srira is also very close to that of Navigius' relief ware. For both practical and economic reasons, lamp production was localised in central Tunisia in the second and third centuries. 81 This means that the adoption of elements from Asia Minor took place primarily in the workshops of Byzacena. The local pottery tradition must have been strong here, and it is hardly a matter of chance that the workshop of Navigius and his colleagues —whose characteristic production shows not only imported features but the continued influence of local pottery traditions —was based in the same area of central Tunisia. The ornamental system of terra sigillata chiara D relief ware in its technique is also connected to the head pots and lagynoi of Navigius to some degree. According to J. Garbsch and U. Heimberg, the potters who belonged to Navigius' circle were active probably around AD 3 0 0. 82 J. W. Salomonson argued that the workshops of Navigius, Gududio and Saturninus were active at different times. While the former belonged to the turn of the third century and the opening years of the fourth (290-320 AD), 83 Gududio, he said, was active in the second quarter of the fourth century, since the Christian inscription on one of his vases (Dominus Vobiscum m ) could only have been made after the Edict of Milan. In arguing for this chronology, J. W. Salomonson also alludes to numerous observations considering the clay of African sigillata. The African workshops began to use red clay only in the third century. Earlier, in the second-third century, lamps were made from lighter, yellowgrey clay. While on the one hand denying the earlier dating for North African lagynoi with head-shaped spout, and excluding the first half of the third century, the probable moment when the North African series could have connected to its Asia Minor prototypes, from discussion, he singles out a small set of lagynoi (the two pieces in the Louvre, the one in Amsterdam, whose ornamental garland of grape-leaves on the shoulder and Dionysiac procession speaks for its direct connection with likely models from Asia Minor), which he treats as a chronologically separate group. He does not, however, give any adequate explanation for the gap of half
