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The Roman Pottery of Kent
by Dr Richard J. Pollard  -  Chapter 4  page 86
Doctoral thesis completed in 1982, published 1988

Wood type’ wares at Southwark in the period c. A.D. 130—160 is less than for the Trajanic-mid Hadrianic period (ibid.) from which it may be concluded that the majority of Kent material is also likely to be pre-Antonine.
   Fine grey wares, with sparse to abundant quartz inclusions, were also imported from North Gaul in the latter half of the second and the early third centuries. The vessels are of ‘Arras ware’, produced in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais departments of France (Tuffreau-Libre 1980a, 1980b) and included tall-neck beakers (ibid., 1980a, fig. 31, nos. 6 and 7; fig. 32, no. 4: no. 177 here), carinated bead-rim bowls with sub-vertical upper walls (ibid., fig. 11, nos. 4 and 6), and carinated flaring-wall bowls (ibid., fig. 7, no. 7). Several examples have been recognised by the present author from the Classis Britannica fort at Dover (Philp 1981, e.g. nos. 512, 515, 568, 669, 694 and 853), and other vessels may also be represented on this site (ibid., e.g. nos. 646 and 661). Beakers are also known from Higham, Birchington, Richborough and Folkestone, and a sub-vertical-sided carinated bowl from Canterbury (all unpublished; the Canterbury vessel is Pollard forthcoming, d, no. 200). These fine wares are accompanied by coarse sandy grey ware jars, probably also of North Gaulish origin, at Dover (no. 176 here; see below). The ‘Arras’ industry in North Gaul produced these forms of beakers and sub-vertical carinated bowls from the first into the third or fourth century A.D. (Tuffreau-Libre 1980a, 223—5), but the Dover evidence suggests that the mid-Antonine to Severan period was the only time at which imports entered Britain on an appreciable scale (cf. Richardson and Tyers 1984, for evidence from London).
   The flagons of the Hadrianic-Severan period have been discussed in part in the preceding paragraphs. The typological development of the various industries involved in flagon production is closely similar during the second century; the cupped ring-neck flagon would seem to have

been a particularly common product of the Brockley Hill-Verulamium region from c. A.D. 120/125 to the end of the second century (Tyers and Marsh 1978, forms IB 7—10) and was accompanied by pinch-mouth jugs. Oxidised sandy and fine fabrics with cream slips were introduced in the Hadrianic and early Antonine periods to supplement the buff sandy fabric that had been used since the inception of the industry. There may have been a marked decrease in the scale of production of the industry around A.D. 160 (ibid.), but flagons and mortaria apparently continued to be turned out into the early third century. White-slipped and buff fine and sandy wares are the most frequently encountered flagon fabrics in the Hadrianic-Severan period in west Kent, but the role played by the Brockley Hill-Verulamium industry in supplying vessels to this region is unclear. Flange-neck forms do not seem to have been produced by this industry, perhaps because of its waning in the last years of the second century.
   The range of flagon forms produced by the Canterbury industry in the Hadrianic-Antonine period is well illustrated by the pottery from the Dane John kiln site (Kirkman, 1940, nos. 40—58; nos. 75—6, 78—84 here) and Whitehall Road kiln III (Jenkins 1960, fig. 5, nos. 18—20, 22). These include cupped ring-neck, ‘hammerhead’ plain and ringed, triangular bead-and-ring neck and cupped bead-rim forms, as well as pinched mouth jugs (no. 74 here) in grey sandy ware. The fabrics cover a wide degree of coarseness, and are usually buff to orange in colour (q. v. 4.III). They were distributed throughout east Kent (Fig. 22), particularly east of the Forest of Blean where the white-slipped and oxidised fine wares of Ospringe cemetery forms (see above) were apparently uncommon by comparison. The Canterbury industry of the late Antonine-Severan period appears to have found itself in difficulties (5.III.4) from which it failed to recover; the flanged-neck form does not occur on kilns sites of the Canterbury industry and,

Page 86

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