Understanding popular Latin of Roman Hispania through graffiti on pottery

'Sigillata' pottery, from Roman times, was manufactured with a mould and sometimes stamped with figures and patterns.  Credit: Universitat de València

Te University of Valencia is studying the popular Latin of Roman Hispania through the graffiti found on 'terra sigillata' ceramic ware. As part of this approach, analyses of the graffiti kept in the Spanish Royal Academy of History have just been started with a recent publication in the journal Lucentum: Anales de la Universidad de Alicante'.

'Research focuses on the words written on the surface of these everyday ceramic pieces which can provide linguistic data, but also territorial and ethnological information', says the author of the work, Josep Montesinos, professor of Art History at the Faculty of Geography and History. Xaverio Ballester, professor in the Department of Classical Philology at the University of Valencia is also part of the team.

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