La tavola di duchi, vescovi e mercanti a Senigallia

In last 15 years of archaeological excavations at Senigallia have been studied new ceramic contexts that showed the characteristics of the material culture of the city in a period known already for Borgia’s and Della Rovere Dukes intrigues. The city's wealth and its dynamic market will help to establish a center of great economic importance due to its favorable location along Mid-Adriatic coasts. In Piazza del Duca’s contexts and inside two blocks of the old urban plan, as well as in the restoration of the castle Della Rovere, the finds illustrate the material culture of this community which features pottery of extreme wealth and tableware plain and glazed, imported vessels from various regions of the Adriatic Sea, from the western Mediterranean, as well as regional productions. They are the result of a prosperous land, well connected in the network of settlements of central Italy. The city in this period is almost entirely overhauled twice with new massive fortifications and with completely different forms. Tax relief on businesses and the great works in drainage of the territory attracted considerable mass of rural population and numerous merchants of various Jewish communities. Population growth along with the strengthening of political rapprochement with the pontifical family and the Roman aristocracy marked the takeoff of this city and its Fiera della Maddalena, the so called ‘Fiera franca,’ where customs duties were paid. These conditions led to the birth of one of the most important markets of Adriatic Italy, with trade from all the Mediterranean countries, with 14 foreign consulates in the eighteenth century, to protect commercial activities. In this paper we will try to show how the associations between ceramics categories characterize different areas of the settlement. For this purpose we selected a privileged zone, as the Rocca, a residential sector and two areas of housing near the Market.