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below, this section also). In essence, BB2 is a wheel-thrown, sand-tempered,
reduced fabric, covered overall (dishes) or in part (jars) with a slip that
is normally also reduced, but very occasionally white; slipped zones are
burnished to a varying degree, and the lower, unslipped, portion of the jar
wall is also burnished. Decoration is restricted to tooled oblique,
vertical, and latticed lines on the exterior of jars below the shoulder, and
to these motifs plus wavy lines on the exterior of dishes (see Farrar 1973,
84). BB2 of the period up to c. A.D. 180 is different in several
respects from that of the late-second to mid-third century; it is
convenient, therefore, to describe the coarse pottery of west Kent in the
former period separately from that of the latter.
The production of BB2 seems to have begun during the reign of
Hadrian. It was believed until recently (e.g. Farrar 1973) that the main
centre was Colchester, as Hull’s research revealed that the major forms
were associated with kilns there (1963): the decorated pie-dish (ibid., Form
37), the plain pie-dish (Form 38), the dog-dish (Forms 40A and 40B), and the
everted-rim jar (Form 278). Williams (1977, 195—6) pointed out that Forms
37 and 278 also incorporated non-BB2 grey wares; the supposed BB2 vessels
from kiln sites could not be found, and a sample of local Colchester sand
was used as the basis for discussing the allocation of petrologically
analysed vessels from various parts of Britain to a Colchester source.
Williams concluded that Colchester was the main, if not the sole, supplier
of BB2 to Scotland in the early Antonine period, and that it was also the
‘single largest supplier of BB2 in the south-east’ (ibid., 207—13).
He recognised that BB2 emanated from kilns along the Thames estuary, and in
addition, postulated sources in east Kent and at other, undesignated,
locations. An origin earlier than the Hadrianic period also seems less
likely than was believed by Williams (ibid., 207).
The one piece of evidence submitted by Williams to support
Flavian exportation of BB2 from Colchester, a
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pie-dish from Canterbury in a Claudio-Vespasianic context (Jenkins 1950,
fig. 11, no. 28), came from, a pit cut by later Roman features, and thus
quite possibly contaminated by intrusive material (see also 4.III.3).
The kiln site at Chalk is, on the grounds of vessel typology,
the earliest of the Thames Estuary BB2 potteries at least in Kent. The
bead-rim jars (Allen 1954, nos. 5—10; cf. no. 90 here) date mainly
to the early to mid-second century and have not been found on other kiln
sites except in very small numbers suggestive of residual or imported
material rather than contemporary on-site production. The other forms
apparently produced at Chalk include everted-rim BB2 jars with a curved ‘cavetto’
rim (cf. Gillam 1970, Type 222—decorated, and Types 225 and 313—plain;
Gillam and Mann 1970, fig. 2, no. 22—decorated), decorated BB2 dog-dishes
(Gillam 1970, Type 328; Gillam and Mann 1970, fig. 2, no. 23, and possibly
no. 19) and slipped necked bead-rim jars with tooled chevrons on the
shoulder. The last-named form satisfies all the criteria proposed above (q.v.
Farrar 1973, 84) for BB2; however, it was apparently not used in the
northern military zone (cf. Gillam 1970), and has consequently been
overlooked in discussion of BB2 in the south-east of Britain (cf. Farrar
1973; Williams 1977). It is proposed here that vessels of this form should
be designated BB2 when slipped: unslipped wares fall into the ‘burnished
ware’ category mentioned at the beginning of this section. The slipped
necked jar or bowl was produced throughout the time span of BB2 from the
Hadrianic period into the fourth century alongside unslipped, burnished
vessels of the same form; other slipped forms were introduced late in the
second or early in the third century (see below).
The evidence for BB2 production beginning in the Hadrianic
period comes from Southwark and Greenhithe. The earliest BB2 at Southwark
comprises shallow decorated pie- and dog-dishes (Tyers and Marsh 1978, types
IVH 1 and IVJ 2) and lattice-decorated everted-rim
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