Een verhaal over trends en continuïteit: aardewerkonderzoek nieuwe stijl toegepast op het aardewerk van Jelsum

In this article the results of the research on the pottery and other clay-wares from the terp remnant of Jelsum are presented. The main material of this study is from the excavation by the Groningen Institute for Archaeology in 2010 of the long escarpment of the terp remnant of Jelsum. Of secondary importance was the material from a smaller excavation on the same location in 1981 by the Fries Museum. While examining the pottery from 2010 a ‘contextual method’ was developed to study the minimum and estimated maximum amount of pottery in secondary context and to provide an impression of the general occurrence of older finds in younger layers. The highest occurrence of pottery in secondary context occurs in layers belonging to the medieval habitation phase, reaching up to 90%. For the earlier phases the minimum percentages of pottery in secondary contexts fluctuate between 3-55%, while estimated maximums range from 25-67%.Though applying this new contextual method takes more time than using the conventional method, this approach gives a better general understanding of the pottery and habitation history of the site, making it worth the effort. The combination of pottery types in the oldest settlement layers, combined with the find of a loom weight in the same context, date the beginning of permanent habitation in Jelsum to around 400 BCE. Though a few stone grit tempered potsherds in a deeper located salt marsh layer point to earlier human activity in the vicinity, these could not be linked to traces of actual habitation here. The number of pottery finds increases in higher and younger layers, peaking in layers from the 1st century CE. The amount of pottery declines in younger layers, perhaps reflecting a decreasing population on the terp. However, during the supposed habitation hiatus of the Frisian Terp Area in the 4th century CE, the terp settlement of Jelsum was still occupied. This demonstrates that the Frisian area was not entirely abandoned. The last pottery in context dates from the early Middle Ages, which probably indicates that from this period onwards occupation was located on another part of the terp.