Viva Sacco

Publication: Pottery production and circulation in Northern Africa from Late Antiquity to the Post Medieval Period (6th-18th century CE)

Viva Sacco is an Associate Lecturer (Teaching) in Islamic Archaeology at University College London. Her research focuses on pottery production and circulation in the Early Medieval Mediterranean, with particular emphasis on Islamic Sicily and North Africa. She combines macroscopic analysis with archaeometric approaches to investigate ceramic production, trade, and economic networks. She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings. In 2024, she published the monograph Dalla ceramica alla storia economica. Il caso di Palermo islamica, which explores the relationship between ceramic evidence and the economic history of Islamic Palermo.

Pottery Production and Circulation in Northern Africa from Late Antiquity to the Post-Medieval Period (6th–18th century) delivers the first long-term, region-wide synthesis of North African ceramics, bringing pioneering research by Maghrebi, European, and UK scholars to an international audience. Spanning twelve centuries from Egypt to Morocco, it publishes the peer-reviewed proceedings of the AIECM3 congress (Tunis, December 2025), which convened over sixty specialists. By integrating archaeological and archaeometric evidence, the volume foregrounds North Africa’s central role in Mediterranean exchange, introduces major new data, challenges established narratives, and provides an essential foundation for future research in the field.