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Roman system of commercial trade involving market or monetary transactions
was inhibited by taxation in kind, imposed by the military authorities in
the early post-Conquest years (Hopkins 1980, 103; Pollard 1983a, 474—535).
It may be erroneous to suppose that the Conquest provided an immediate
stimulus to the production and marketing of coarse pottery, except where
there was direct contact with an imperial consumer such as the Richborough
base represented, or a burgeoning township. The foundation of the
London-Southwark community may explain the development of the
sand-tempered wheel-thrown ware pottery found on pre-Flavian sites in
north-west Kent and Surrey. The forms are mostly based on indigenous
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pre-Roman types, as has been observed by Tyers and Marsh (1978, 553). The
introduction of sandy wares may have been a response to Gallo-Roman
practice, but this need not have been the case. It is clear that a wide
variety of fabrics was produced in the late Iron Age; experimentation by
native potters may have resulted in the adoption of this kind of fabric.
This would seem to be the case at Highgate Wood in north London, where
first-century pottery exhibits some fabric differentiation between simple
jar forms and ‘finer’ wares, the latter containing a higher proportion
of sand in what are basically grog-tempered wares (Brown and Sheldon 1974,
224).
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