Potes meleiros e colmeias em cerâmica: uma tradição milenar

Abstract

A brief description of the importance of honey in the ancient times is presented and the existence of containers meant to its storage emphasized. Taking into account the antiquity of these storage jars collected in the Peninsula (at least datable from about 600 B.C.), their persistence throughout times and the existence of ethnographic parallels still documented nowadays, it is admitted that we are dealing with a tradition with origin in the Peninsula. The importance of the mellaria in the economy of the Ancient World is also highlighted as well as the identification of ceramics beehives in the area of Valencia and of an unknown one collected in Bracara Augusta, a Roman city situated in the extreme west of the Peninsula. Finally, the importance of honey in times after the Roman period is briefly referred to.