The Kingdom of Navarra was a small Christian kingdom in the north of the Iberian Peninsula from the 9th to 16th centuries. The production of ceramics in this small kingdom has been studied in this research with the objective of identifying the main production centres, the sources of raw materials, the manufacturing techniques and the commercial relationship that were established.

To this end, samples from different sites have been selected: Estella, Gorriz-Luzea, Lumbier, Monreal, Olite, Pamplona, Rada, Roncesvalles, Tafalla, Tiebas, Tudela, Viana and Zamarze. Its geographic distribution, population and chronology (13th and 14th centuries) have been considered. The selected materials include mainly earthenware, but also bricks, roof tiles and paving tiles.

The analytical techniques used were the following: colorimetry, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction and Scanning Electron Microscopy coupled with Energy Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The analytical results have been processed using statistical tools such as Principal Component Analysis and dendrograms.

The results have made it possible to identify at least four main production centres: Tudela, Pamplona, Estella and Lumbier. All of them used local raw materials and adapted them to produce ceramics. Ceramic from the Ebro Valley is lighter due to its higher content of calcium and aluminium minerals. On the contrary, the ceramics of the pre-Pyrenean basins are more colourful and have a higher content of quartz. The ceramics of these producing centres also appear in other locations of smaller size without ceramic production. This information allows us to begin to reconstruct the ceramics production in Northern Iberian Peninsula and distribution network during mediaeval times.

Acknowledgements: The reported study was funded by Dirección General de Cultura-Institución Príncipe de Viana under projects: “Thibalt. Caracterización arqueométrica de Carreaux de Pavement procedentes del Castillo de Tiebas (Navarra)” and “Aplicación del arqueomagnetismo y otras técnicas fisicoquímicas para el estudio de la tecnología de fabricación de azulejos medievales navarros”. I.R.-A. thanks the Association of Friends of the University of Navarra for his doctoral scholarship.