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III. THE HADRIANIC TO SEVERAN
PERIOD,
c. A.D. 120-220
1. The Fine Wares
Fine ware assemblages of the century following the death of Trajan are
dominated by two fabrics: Central Gaulish samian and Upchurch(?) fine grey
ware, the former primarily supplying cups and open bowls, the latter
beakers. Imports of colour-coated wares from the Continent reached a wider
market than in previous years: the white-fabric dark slip lower Rhineland
wares are particularly frequent in occurrence on all classes of site
throughout Kent, as are the black-slip Central Gaulish beakers and cups
imported alongside red-slip samian during the second half of the second
century. The varied wares originating in the London area are generally
thought not to have been produced after c. A.D. 130 (see 4.II.1, and
Marsh 1978, 199), and the oxidised, white-slipped, and painted wares
possibly emanating from the Upchurch Marshes industry would also seem to
have been discontinued around that time, apart from production of flagons in
oxidised and white-slipped wares and beakers in oxidised ware. Further
afield, however, two Romano-British fine ware industries burgeoned in the
Hadrianic-early Antonine period (c. A.D. 120—160), in the lower
Nene Valley around Durobrivae (modern Water Newton: Howe et al., 1980),
and around Colchester (Hull 1963). The role that these two industries played
in the supply of fine pottery is uncertain,, owing to similarities of
fabrics and forms to Continental imports and to each other (Orton 1977b, 41;
Anderson et a!. 1982). Towards the end of the period under review
supplies of samian ware from Central Gaul declined in quantity, particularly
in the last decade of the second century, and were effectively terminated at
the end of the century (Johns 1971, 25), leaving a small-scale trade in East Gaulish
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samian, which was accompanied by black-slip
beakers known as Trier ‘Rhenish ware’ or Moselkeramik, that
continued during the first half of the third century. East Gaulish samian
was imported from the Hadrianic period onwards, but was always very much in
the shadow of the giant Central Gaulish industries, particularly those at
Lezoux and Les Martres-de-Veyre, until their sudden demise.
The publication of samian pottery has tended to be isolated
from that of the remainder of Roman pottery in Britain, owing to its
especial qualities as a dating medium that are a result of the industrial
practices of stamping vessels with potters’ marks and utilising distinct
figure-types in relief-moulding. The analysis of these techniques enables
inter-site links to be established, and hence provides the facility to date
one site by analogy with the samian from another site for which independent
dating evidence such as building inscriptions or literary evidence for
military campaigns can be adduced. It is an unfortunate consequence of this
isolation that quantities of samian, and the frequency of different classes
of vessel, have rarely been related to those of other wares in the
publication of excavation reports and pottery syntheses (cf. e.g. Green
1976, 282, and Orton 1977b, 43). This shortcoming has been, for the present
study, exacerbated by the necessity, recognised quite correctly by
excavators, of submitting samian to specialists for analysis; consequently,
the samian has all too frequently been unavailable for study by the present
author with a view to quantification in line with that undertaken with other
types of pottery. Published quantified statistics on samian tend to be based
either on a ‘minimum numbers of vessels’ approach (e.g. Bird 1982b and
forthcoming) or on ‘numbers of stamps! decorated sherds per ten/five year
period’ (e.g. Bird and Marsh, 1978). Clearly the latter takes account of
only a small portion of the samian assemblage, and in published form
differentiation
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