could represent the occasional landing of a small part of the cargo at the
Wantsum Channel port, or the dumping of vessels found to have been broken in
transit. Fulford (1981, 202—3) has suggested that Dorset BB1 was
transported up the west coast of Britain as a makeweight in cargoes of
official supplies of essential commodities such as grain, rather than as a
cargo by itself. The very small quantities of BB1 reaching the London area
over a period of perhaps twenty years would also seem to fit this hypothesis
of a subsidiary cargo; it is plausible that the burgeoning provincial
capital required commodities that could be supplied from the south-west,
perhaps food-stuffs or raw materials. The development of the BB2 industry in
the Thames estuary and Colchester presumably rendered even this minor level
of long-distance trade in coarse pottery unviable.
The introduction of BB2 to the range of coarse pottery current
in west Kent in the second quarter of the second century is a manifestation
of a highly popular fashion for lattice-decorated everted rim jars and
triangular-rim pie-dishes. Not only are these forms ubiquitous in west Kent
in slipped, wheel-thrown wares (Figs. 25 and 30), but there is also a
variety of unslipped, sand-tempered, often hand-made vessels extant from
sites of the Hadrianic-early Antonine period which imitate ‘genuine’ BB2
in varying degrees of accuracy. Such vessels comprise nearly one quarter of
the pottery from the rubbish deposit of this period at Greenhithe (e.g. nos.
107—109 here; see Appendix 5), in contrast with their total of only 7 per
cent in the mainly Trajanic pit from that site. Early ‘BB2 imitations’
have also been recorded by the present author from Charlton, the Otford ‘Charne’
site and Springhead (all unpublished); Williams (1977, 198) considered that
two vessels from Rochester (Harrison and Flight 1968, fig. 13, nos. 18 and
19) were in the same fabric as the Greenhithe vessels. It is conceivable
also that the triangular-rimmed pie-dishes from Southwark published as BB1,
but without parallels in the
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north of the province, are in fact ‘BB2 imitations’ of local production
(Tyers and Marsh 1978, type IVG 3, dated to c. A.D. 120—150+),
although they occur somewhat earlier at this site than ‘genuine’ BB2
pie-dishes (ibid; type IVH). The development of the BB2 industry of
the lower Thames is discussed further below (5.II; 6.V). It should be noted
here that the present author contends Williams’ allocation of the
Greenhithe material described above as BB2, on the grounds that it is
neither slipped nor, in some cases, wheel-thrown (Pollard 1981a).
The ‘imitation’ BB2 of Greenhithe and elsewhere did not
remain in production later than the. early Antonine period. However,
bead-rim jars and necked jar-bowls in grey sandy wheel-thrown wares
continued to be made alongside BB2 throughout the timespan of the latter.
Bead-rim jars probably declined in usage during the third quarter of the
second century: kilns producing BB2 wares of c. A.D. 180-plus forms
did not include bead-rim jars amongst the associated unslipped grey wares
(see below), and the ratio of bead-rim to BB2 everted-rim jars in a deposit
of c. A.D. 150—220/250 at Rochester is markedly lower than that in
a deposit of c. A.D. 90—180 from the same site (2:7 and 7:5,
respectively; Pollard 1981a). The Greenhithe sequence (Detsicas 1966:
quantification by the present author) also exhibits a fall-off in the
discard of bead-rim jars against BB2 everted-rim jars. The necked jar-bowl
appears to have been used in smaller numbers than either of these forms
during the Hadrianic to mid-Antonine period. In contrast with the production
of jars and necked forms in BB2, burnished wares and plain wares, dishes
appear to have been regularly produced only in BB2 during this time. The
lattice-decorated pie-dish, found on kiln sites at Higham (Kiln C: Catherall
1983) and Chalk (Allen 1954) in Kent, was by far the most common form, with
plain and decorated dog-dishes, and pie-dishes with oblique or wavy linear
motifs (nos. 182 and 112 here) comprising the
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