Crafts and Trade in the Visigothic Kingdom

On the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal), craftspeople in the sixth and seventh centuries worked with local materials and imported goods. At Reccopolis, a royal city founded in 578 by King Liuvigild in central Spain, workshops made pottery, glass and metal objects, while glass and ceramics arrived through regional and Mediterranean exchange.

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A royal town and its workshops

Reccopolis was laid out with a palace quarter above a lower city of houses and commercial buildings. Along the main street, shops stood beside workshops, storage rooms and living quarters. This arrangement brought making, storing and selling close together: a craftsperson could work near the place where vessels or ornaments were kept and offered to customers. Excavations identify separate glassworking and metalworking spaces in this commercial area.

Pottery for cooking, storage and transport

Pottery began with clay, which a potter prepared, shaped and fired until it hardened. The wheel helped form regular vessels: a fast wheel was spun by foot, while a slower wheel was turned by hand. At Reccopolis, pottery from Visigothic levels was made predominantly on a fast wheel, which helped potters shape regular forms. They made everyday cooking and storage vessels as well as tableware.

Pottery also carried goods. Large handled storage jars, called amphorae, transported products such as olive oil and wine between coastal areas and the inland city. Imported cooking and common wares from as far away as the Aegean joined these containers at Reccopolis. Ceramic vessels therefore record both local work and the arrival of materials and products through maritime trade.

The countryside had its own production network. In villages around Toledo and Reccopolis, related wheel-made pottery types circulated across settlements. Their distribution points to a shared regional source in the second half of the sixth century. These rural forms differ from the pottery found in the two towns, which suggests that rural workshops supplied a distinct set of users and needs.

Glass: imported material, local work

Glass workshops occupied the commercial district south of Reccopolis’s palace complex. Their circular furnaces and processing structures heated glass so workers could shape and cool it into cups, plates, small ointment vessels and lamps. Excavators dated one workshop from the city’s 578 foundation into the first half of the seventh century; other furnaces were used during the seventh century. Glass fragments in homes show the finished vessels in everyday use.

Chemical composition can reveal where glass was first made, even when craftspeople reheated and shaped it elsewhere. Analyses place most tested Reccopolis glass samples from late sixth- to ninth-century contexts in groups associated with primary production in the eastern Mediterranean. Large primary workshops made glass in bulk; prepared glass then traveled west for local workers to reheat and shape into vessels. The workshop contained sand and recycled glass fragments, alongside furnaces and structures for reheating, shaping and cooling glass.

Metalworking and regional exchange

The metalworkers’ workshop contained molds for earrings and rings, small weighing pans and slag, the waste left by metalworking. Workers could pour molten metal into a mold, let it cool, then remove and finish the ornament. Workers probably used silver, gold and bronze, according to the site project; the weighing pans could measure this valuable stock.

The central Iberian road network followed river valleys north to south and linked them east to west, joining Reccopolis and Toledo with surrounding villages. The glass analyses point to primary production on the eastern Mediterranean coast, including the Levant. Imported storage jars connect the inland city with coastal exchange.