Dales Ware: a distinctive Romano-British Cooking-pot

Abstract

The type of cooking-pot considered here is common in northern England, is precisely datable, appears to have been fashionable only for a short period, and has an unmistakable profile. It is thus especially valuable as an index of chronology.Though there are exceptions, most examples of the type are made in the same kind of fabric. This fabric is hard and coarse, with a smooth but unpolished surface; it is grey, black, or brown in colour. The body of the clay is charged with small fragments of white shell; these have often been dissolved by acids in the soil, leaving the surface pitted with shallow cavities, in the same way that pieces of mineral calcite are dissolved out of similar wares. The fabric thus belongs to the same family of calcite-gritted wares as Knapton ware and as the Huntcliff type of cooking-pot, without being identical with them. Wares of this character, differing from each other markedly in form, but only slightly in fabric, are found in early Iron Age, Roman, and Dark Age horizons, and are widely distributed; they were especially common in the Roman period in what is now Yorkshire, and in the north-east midlands. They did not appear in large numbers on Hadrian's Wall before the fourth century.