Romano-British Pottery Research Articles

The costs of transporting goods by different modes: A case study of pottery movement in late Roman Britain

There is a long-standing view that, in the Roman world, transport by sea and river was very much cheaper than by land. Previous analyses of transport costs have relied primarily on a few surviving historical records, notably the Edict on Maximum Prices issued by Diocletian in 301 CE. Here we outline an alternative method for deriving relative costs of transportation by different modes using materials recovered in archaeological excavations. We apply this to the distribution of Late Romano-British pottery (c. 250–400 CE) to calculate the cost ratios of transportation by road, river and sea to rural settlements and towns in lowland Britannia. The analysis suggests a best fit cost ratio of road to rivers and sea of 1:3:4 (i.e. transport by road was three times as costly as by river and four times that by sea), with 95% confidence interval of roads to rivers 1:1–5 and roads to sea of 1:1–9. These values are broadly consistent with transport cost ratios of 1:4:8 in England in the first half of the fourteenth century, when the country's transport network had reached a degree of integration comparable with late Roman Britain.

Peindre l’Antiquité romaine à l’heure du pacifisme victorien : considérations sur un portrait d’Hadrien par Alma-Tadema

Roman antiquity was a major reference for artists all along the 19th century. In this time of European crisis, critics as public did appreciate how striking pictures (battles and sacrifices) depicted heroism and bravery. Although Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema was the flagship of the British Classic Revival, he definitely chose to paint a different kind of serene Antiquity that was known to illustrate, at the very end, the current mood of English society. Hadrian in England Visiting a Romano-British Pottery, a 1884 painting, let us guess how Alma-Tadema used Antiquity that way, as Hadrian was the only emperor who came to England, not to mention that it was quite significant to figure the main actor of the pax Romana whereas European pacifist expectations were challenging British imperialism. Full of archeological details, this puzzling painting will help us to understand why ancient Rome became a prime model as well as an ideological authority for Victorian England in search of legitimacy.

A Romano-British enclosure near Rossington, South Yorkshire

Excavations in 2012 and 2014 examined a small sub-square enclosure, associated field system and four adjacent waterholes. A patch of cremated human bone radiocarbon dated to the early–mid-Romano-British period was revealed in the partially silted enclosure ditch; the small quantity of bone recovered may suggest that it was a secondary deposit. A small assemblage of finds including Romano-British pottery was collected. The wider landscape setting of the site is examined.

Beccles Triple Post Alignment, Beccles Marshes, Suffolk: Excavation and Palaeoenvironmental Analyses of an Iron Age Wetland Site

This paper describes the results of two seasons of excavation and associated palaeoenvironmental analyses of a wetland site on Beccles Marshes, Beccles, Suffolk. The site has been identified as a triple post alignment of oak timbers (0.6–2.0 m long), over 100 m in length, and 3–4 m wide, running north-west to south-east towards the River Waveney. It was constructed in a single phase which has been dated dendrochronologically to 75 BC, although discrete brushwood features identified as possible short trackways have been dated by radiocarbon to both before and after the alignment was built. It is unclear if the posts ever supported a superstructure but notches (‘halving lap joints’) in some of the posts appear to have held timbers to support the posts and/or aid in their insertion. In addition, fragments of both Iron Age and Romano-British pottery were recovered. A substantial assemblage of worked wooden remains appears to reflect the construction of the post row itself and perhaps the on-site clearance of floodplain vegetation. This assemblage also contains waste material derived from the reduction splitting of timbers larger than the posts of the alignment, but which have not been recovered from the site. Environmental analyses indicate that the current landscape context of the site with respect to the River Waveney is probably similar to that which pertained in prehistory. The coleoptera (beetle) record illustrates a series of changes in the on-site vegetation in the period before, during and after the main phase of human activity which may be related to a range of factors including floodplain hydrology and anthropogenic utilisation of Beccles Marshes. The possible form and function of the site is discussed in relation to the later prehistoric period in Suffolk.

The West Wansdyke: an appraisal of the dating, dimensions and construction techniques in the light of excavated evidence

The West Wansdyke is a major earthwork in the former County of Avon, now Bath and North-East Somerset, which is thought to date to either the late Roman or early post-Roman periods. A series of cross-sections excavated across the earthwork showed, firstly, that it originally existed in some areas where there are no longer any visible remains, but, secondly, that there are still some unexplained gaps. The research suggests that the monument was of a very consistent and uniform design and dimensions, a feature which implies strategic planning and co-ordinated management during construction. Evidence from two particular sites, Blackrock Lane and Compton Green, indicated that significant stretches of the dyke bank originally had a timber revetment, but that, where it was easily available, stone was used, as at Binces Lane, Stantonbury. Little artefactual dating evidence was recovered during the work, although the presence of Romano-British and earlier pottery, and prehistoric flints from bank construction deposits does not preclude the established, post-Roman, context, but can also allow a late Roman date. Construction techniques indicate work in a Roman military tradition, possibly re-using an earlier structure.

Bryn Eryr: An Enclosed Settlement of the Iron Age on Anglesey

Excavations on the site of a rectangular earthwork at Bryn Eryr, Angelsey, have identified a sequence of occupation. In the Middle Iron Age a single clay-walled round-house stood within a timber stockade. By the later Iron Age a second house had been added, adjacent to the first, and these two houses became the focus of a planned settlement. A rectangular bank and ditch enclosure was established of 0.3 ha internal area. A yard developed in front of the houses, at the head of a trackway leading from the entrance. Rectangular post-built structures, perhaps granaries, were built and pits were dug to provide clay flooring and, perhaps, wall plastering for the houses. By the early 1st millennium AD the perimeter ditch had become choked with silt and the bank was eroding badly. A third house, with stone footings, was added to the south of the original two, one of which was by now out of use. Romano-British pottery, in small quantities but of good quality, was in use on the site. The farm appears to have been abandoned, after perhaps 700 years of development, during the late 3rd or 4th century AD.

Excavations on the Lower Terrace, Site C, Tintagel Island 1990–94

This article reports excavations undertaken between 1990 and 1994 on a small cliff terrace, at Tintagel Island in Cornwall. This terrace (the Lower Terrace) lies below Site C (the Middle Terrace), where a building was excavated by Dr C.A.R. Radford in the 1930s. The remains uncovered on the Lower Terrace comprise several phases of ephemeral stone and turf structures with associated hearths, floor deposits and stakeholes. These are separated by periods of shillet (tiny flakes of slate in sandy clay soil) levelling. With the collapse of the last structure the terrace was buried by layers of scree and slate slip from the slope above. Artefact groups of fire-lighting stones, whetstones and worked flint and quartz were recovered predominantly from earlier phases, together with Romano-British Native pottery. Later phases mainly comprised sherds of Imported Mediterranean pottery (84 per cent of all finds) and slate disc pot lids. The results of an extensive programme of environmental sampling clarified that a wide range of probably locally growing trees and shrubs were exploited for fuel, as well as for wattles and larger posts and beams. Tiny burnt fragments of animal and some human bone were found scattered through a handful of deposits, but the material is probably residual. A programme of radiocarbon dating was possible with the availability of charcoal material from hearths and stakeholes. This programme, using innovative mathematical modelling techniques, produced three distinct date ranges of structural activity on the Lower Terrace:395–460 cal ADfor one of the earliest phases of hearths, floors and stakeholes pre-dating the occurrence of Imported pottery;415–535 cal ADfor a later structural phase with hearths and first occurrences of Imported and Native pottery together; and560–670 cal ADfor the latest and best surviving structure, with hearths, stakeholes and a large assemblage of Imported pottery.

The Settlement and Drainage of the Wentlooge Level, Gwent: Excavation and Survey at Rumney Great Wharf 1992

The Wentlooge Level in SE Wales represents an extensive area of some 35 km2 of alluvium reclaimed from estuarine saltmarsh from the Romano-British period onwards (FIGS 1-2). As was noted by Allen, the landscape is characterised at its southern and northern extremities by a pattern of small irregular fields, often fossilizing the meanderings of natural drainage channels (FIG. 2). This arrangement is typical of many of the reclaimed alluvial wetlands that fringe the Severn Estuary. The remainder of the Wentlooge Level is distinguished by a very different landscape, comprising regularly planned blocks of long, narrow, and generally straight-sided fields, quite unique among the wetlands of the Severn Estuary. At Rumney Great Wharf, north east of Cardiff, part of the latter field-system can be seen cut into a clay-peat shelf in the intertidal zone (see below), thus indicating a major episode of coastal retreat and the repositioning of the sea-wall across it; similar evidence from the intertidal zone can be recognised as far to the north-east as Peterstone Gout. An extensive spread of Romano-British pottery and primitive iron-making slag was associated locally with this field-system in the intertidal zone at Rumney Great Wharf, while survey of the adjacent mud cliff revealed at least one ditch, sealed by a buried palaeosol, which yielded stratified Roman material. Further erosion of the mud cliffrevealed more ditches with Romano-British material, as well as other indications of settlement, and prompted a programme of survey and excavation grant-aided by Cadw and the National Museum of Wales in the spring of 1992.

Excavations at Alt Clut, 1974-5: catalogue of coins, metal objects and Romano-British pottery

Excavations at Alt Clut, 1974-5: catalogue of coins, metal objects and Romano-British pottery

The Current State of Romano-British Pottery Studies: A Review for English Heritage

The Current State of Romano-British Pottery Studies: A Review for English Heritage

Romano-British Pottery Kilns at Caldicot, Gwent

Rescue excavation at Caldicot, Gwent (ST 4787) revealed at least six kilns of late third to early fourth century A.D. date, along with evidence for earlier (third century) production. Jars form the most important class of vessel produced and forms reminiscent of BB1 were particularly significant. The kiln products fit within the chronologically much broader reduced ware tradition of south-east Wales.

Roxby Iron Age Settlement and the Iron Age in North-East Yorkshire

Round houses and an enclosure, surviving parts of a nucleated settlement on boulder clay terrain at Roxby (near Staithes, north-east Yorkshire), discovered from the air in 1972, were excavated 1973–81. Most were dated to the immediately pre-Roman Iron Age, but one round house, standing in an area of marks of former cross-ploughing, had native Romano-British pottery, and in the last phase of ditch silting, sherds of sixth century AD Anglo-Saxon stamped ware. The economy was based on mixed farming, but two of the Iron Age houses also contained iron working comprising both smelting and smithing. These houses also yielded fragments of jet and glass and were interpreted as a repair workshop, rather than a production unit. Great structural detail had been preserved and was recorded. The houses were architecturally different and represent a significant addition to the prehistoric round house data. They lie in that part of the township of Roxby which escaped medieval ploughing, and probably represent a fraction of the total original settlement. This and other data in north-east Yorkshire show that an economy based on settled mixed farming, not on semi-nomadic pastoralism, was widespread across the boulder clay encircling the North York Moors.

Romano-British Face Pots and Head Pots

Face pots and head pots which, while never common, were clearly much more widely used in Roman Britain than the number of surviving whole vessels might lead one to believe, are among the most attractive and least documented products of the Romano-British pottery industries. Face pots, with their crude, barbaric, rather comic-looking features stuck incongruously on a well-made Roman jar, are quite unlike any other type of Roman pottery, where free-hand figurative decoration is practically unknown. Head pots, with their contrived hair styles and naturalistic features, are more classical-looking and more acceptably ‘Roman’, and yet they seem to be a purely insular development, found only in the remote province of Britain and with no obvious close counterparts anywhere else in the Roman Empire except perhaps in North Africa. The purpose of this article is to outline the development of these two types of vessels in Britain and to make a preliminary attempt to define the regional groups that evolved, with a brief reference to the earlier and parallel developments on the Continent, and finally to discuss, in the light of the meagre evidence available, what might have been their function and possible significance.

THE CHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF ROMANO‐BRITISH POTTERY FROM THE ALICE HOLT FOREST, HAMPSHIRE, BY MEANS OF INDUCTIVELY‐COUPLED PLASMA EMISSION SPECTROMETRY

ArchaeometryVolume 25, Issue 2 p. 179-185 THE CHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF ROMANO-BRITISH POTTERY FROM THE ALICE HOLT FOREST, HAMPSHIRE, BY MEANS OF INDUCTIVELY-COUPLED PLASMA EMISSION SPECTROMETRY F. A. HART, F. A. HART Department of Chemistry and Department of Geological Sciences, Queen Mary College, London, E1 4NS, EnglandSearch for more papers by this authorS. J. ADAMS, S. J. ADAMS Department of Chemistry and Department of Geological Sciences, Queen Mary College, London, E1 4NS, EnglandSearch for more papers by this author F. A. HART, F. A. HART Department of Chemistry and Department of Geological Sciences, Queen Mary College, London, E1 4NS, EnglandSearch for more papers by this authorS. J. ADAMS, S. J. ADAMS Department of Chemistry and Department of Geological Sciences, Queen Mary College, London, E1 4NS, EnglandSearch for more papers by this author First published: August 1983 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4754.1983.tb00674.xCitations: 21AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Citing Literature Volume25, Issue2August 1983Pages 179-185 RelatedInformation

A Romano-British Pottery Manufacturing Site at Oakleigh Farm, Higham, Kent

Among the offerings deposited in Gallo-Roman sanctuaries, the miniature ‘ex-voto’ have seldom been studied. They have been discovered at various sites in Gallia Comata and, apart from a few typically local products, are similar to the better-known examples from Britain.

An Early Saxon Settlement within the Romano-British Small Town at Heybridge, Essex

FIVE GRUBENHAUSER and a probable ground level building sited within the Romano-British small town at Heybridge are described. The associated Saxon pottery suggests that the settlement belongs to the first half of the 5th century, and there is evidence that late Romano-British pottery was in contemporary use. It is suggested that the Saxon settlers were involved either economically or militarily in the life of the late Roman town. The significance of a nearby cemetery containing both late Roman and Saxon burials, one dated c. A.D. 500, is also considered.

A New Roman Rider-Relief from Stragglethorpe, Lincolnshire

N November 1977, a large relief sculpture of Roman date was discovered during drainage work on farmland in the parish of Brant Broughton and Stragglethorpe in Lincolnshire.1 The sculpture had been unearthed by a mechanical excavator in the process of recutting the sides of a field-boundary dyke. Although it was not possible to examine the sculpture in situ, it had apparently been found lying face downwards in a shallow scoop in the subsoil below a residual east-west plough ridge of the broad ridge-and-furrow cultivation which until recently had covered the field. Apart from a fine follis of Licinius I (A.D. 308-324), the sculpture was not found in association with any other Roman material. Part of a worn and battered Roman altar and heavy concentrations of Romano-British pottery and building stone were later found after ploughing some 200oo m to the north-west, and fieldwork has located a series of such concentrations in the surrounding fields.2 Air photographs of the immediate area show an enclosurecomplex together with a pit-alignment nearby.3 Two kilometres to the west aerial photography has pin-pointed enclosures of probable Romano-British date in the parish of Beckingham and occasional finds of Roman material have been recorded over the years in Brant Broughton.4 In its wider context the settlement at Stragglethorpe lies some 20 km to the south-south-west of Lincoln, and about 12 km to the north-west of Ancaster. Smaller Roman settlements lie within io km on the lines of Ermine Street and the Foss Way.5

Some Moulded-Face Flagons from the Oxford Kilns

IN October 1970 the South Oxfordshire Hunt was crossing a field on Little Baldon Farm when one of their number observed some sherds lying on the newly ploughed surface.' One of the first pieces to be recovered was a fine example of a moulded face from the neck of a flagon (No. I, below).2 Further investigation revealed much Romano-British pottery turned up by deep ploughing, and M. Aston and C. Young reported: 'Fragments of mortaria, red colourcoated pottery and kiln debris indicate the site of workshops and perhaps 8 or 9 kilns.'3 The site is in Toot Baldon parish, Oxfordshire, and towards the southern end of the Oxford potteries.' A search of various museums and printed sources has produced some very close parallels to this piece, which are described below in a catalogue and later discussed as a group. Other examples, which share certain characteristics with this group but lack the elaborate coiffure, seem also to have a common origin, and are listed in an appendix. The catalogue will doubtless expand as more collections are examined or more examples excavated, but there seems to be enough information to warrant publication at this stage, and to allow certain conclusions. It is hoped that more interest will be shown in this class of product, which seems to have received only scant attention in excavation reports.

Types of Late Belgic and Early Romano-British Pottery Kilns in the Nene Valley

Almost 16 years have elapsed since the publication, in 1959, of Dr. Philip Corder's paper on the structure of Romano-British pottery kilns. During this time much new evidence has come to light, especially in the upper Nene Valley, and the series of experimental firings carried out at Wattisfield, Boston, Leeds, Barton-on-Humbers and Chichester has greatly enhanced our knowledge of the techniques employed. The present paper is primarily concerned with pottery kilns of the pre-Flavian period in the Nene Valley and seeks to bring together, under one heading, the new and largely unpublished material from this region.

Romano-British and Related: Current Research in Romano-British Coarse Pottery: PapersGiven at aC.B.A. Conference atNewCollege, Oxford, March24–6, 1972. (Council for British Archaeology Research Report 10.) Edited by AlecDetsicas

Romano-British and Related: Current Research in Romano-British Coarse Pottery: PapersGiven at aC.B.A. Conference atNewCollege, Oxford, March24–6, 1972. (Council for British Archaeology Research Report 10.) Edited by AlecDetsicas