Sweet Salty Water: Sugar Moulds Remains from Portuguese Archaeological Contexts (15th-18th centuries)

Description

The sugar production was the great promoter of the Portuguese colonization in the Atlantic. The socio-economic model successfully used in the islands of Madeira and São Tomé e Príncipe, and later in Brazil, inspired other colonial processes in America. The sugar trade activity and the introduction of this product into the European diet and pharmacopeia, raised a high volume of exports that linked the Atlantic.
The increasing number of archaeological works carried out in the Portuguese territory allowed to gather several ceramic forms, such as sugar moulds, whose functions were directly related to the sugar manufacture. It seems clear that Portugal maintained an intense production of these objects to fill the needs of their colonial regions, since there was a scarce production in the Iberian peninsula. We highlight the studies developed in Madeira, a sugar mould receiving centre, but above all the Lisbon and Aveiro pottery workshops that provide an important volume of archaeological data that needs to be systematized.

Period	5 Sep 2019
Event title	25th Annual Meeting of European Association of Archaeologists
Event type	Conference
Location	Bern, Switzerland
Degree of Recognition	International