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as with the Brockley Hill-Verulamium industry, may never have been
introduced. Third century flagons are rarely encountered, being supplanted
throughout Kent by handle-less flasks mostly in grey wares.
2. The Coarse Wares of West Kent
The whole of the Hadrianic-Severan period throughout west Kent is
dominated by the sand-tempered, wheel-thrown products of kilns along the
lower Thames valley. These kilns, as they are known at present, are
concentrated around the Cliffe peninsula in Kent, and the gravel terrace
opposite the peninsula in Essex (Figs. 5 and 69). There are in
addition several kiln sites dotted around west Kent, at New Ash Green (Cockett
1976) and Springhead (Jessup 1928), and also in Essex (see Tyers and Marsh
1978, 539-40, Goodburn 1978, 449-50 and Swan 1984). The pottery
produced in these kilns may be conveniently divided into three fabrics:
coarse sandy ware, fine burnished sandy ware, and slipped sandy ware. These
are usually black or grey in colour, although brown vessels are not uncommon
particularly in third-century assemblages. The pottery represented by kiln
waste from Grays Thurrock Palmers School in Essex (Drury 1973, 118) was, on
present knowledge, unique in having produced fine red, white-slipped
flagons, and cream ware flagons and mortaria, alongside reduced wares.
The development of the scattered pottery industries of west
Kent and south Essex in the Hadrianic-Antonine period resulted in the almost
total exclusion of other coarse wares from the market. Dorset-produced black
sandy ware (BB1) and Brockley Hill-Verulamium sandy wares occur at
Southwark, and shell-tempered, grog-tempered and 'Patch Grove' storage
jars are widespread. Mortaria and possibly black-burnished wares were
imported from Colchester, and mortaria from a number of other sources are
also known.
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Amphorae from southern Spain and southern Gaul continued to be imported into
the province, possibly in larger quantities than in the Claudian-Trajanic
period (see below).
The existence of local kiln sites, producing reduced and brown
sand-tempered, wheel-thrown or wheel-finished wares, in west Kent may be
hypothesised in the late Flavian-Trajanic period, if no earlier, on the
grounds that certain forms in such wares are widespread in the area and were
not produced by known industries in the London area, the Surrey-Hampshire
border, or in east Kent (see above). One such kiln has been excavated on the
Upchurch Marshes, probably of Trajanic date (Ocock 1966). The manufacture of
coarse sand-tempered wheel-thrown bead-rim jars and necked bowls at Chalk
(Allen 1954), possibly in the Hadrianic to mid-Antonine period, followed the
tradition established in the preceding period. However, the necked bowls
were slipped and burnished whereas vessels of pre-Hadrianic date tend to be
burnished only. A more important distinction between production in
pre-Hadrianic and Hadrianic-Antonine times in north Kent lies in the range
of forms; to the long-established bead-rim jar (no. 90) and necked jar or
bowl (no. 92) were added everted-rim jars (cf. no. 115), short-flange-rim
decorated 'pie-dishes' (cf. nos. 110-111) and plain-rim decorated or
undecorated 'dog-dishes' (cf. nos. 113 and 184, and Gillam and Mann
1970, fig. 2, no. 19). These three forms - the everted-rim jar, the
pie-dish, and the dog-dish - together comprised the vast bulk of what is
generally referred to as 'Black-burnished ware category 2' ware (usually
abbreviated to BB2).
BB2 was first defined by Gillam (1960) in his report on the
pottery from the Mumrills fort on the Antonine wall. The suffix '2' is
applied to distinguish this ware from a broadly similar ware produced
originally in Dorset and later elsewhere in Britain, which is known as BB1 (ibid.;
see
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