Portuguese Faience Pottery in the Archaeological Site at Saint John of Tarouca Monastery

“Portuguese Faience Pottery in the Archaeological Site at Saint John of Tarouca Monastery”, by Luís Sebastian, the archaeologist and person responsible for the monastery’s restoration works, is the culmination of about a decade of multidisciplinary work, within the scope of the archaeological excavation of the monastic complex, which took place between 1998 and 2007.

More than 3,500 excavated square metres make this one of the largest dig sites in Portugal, a museum site since 2013, under the Vale do Varosa project, in the field since 2009, under the aegis of the Regional Directorate of Northern Culture.

This work presents the typological study of 2782 pieces of Portuguese faience that could be identified through the collage of more than 13 000 fragments, totalling 226,701 kg in weight. This set is a sample of a more extensive world, but illustrates the production of Portuguese faience, in one of the largest visual records ever undertaken in Portugal.