stone in a post-destruction deposit in the ‘Deep Room’ (late
fourth-early fifth century: Pollard 1987, Group LII, fig. 76, no 173). These
may be Kent products, or from kilns north of the Thames. Burnished
bead-and-flange dishes also occur in the aforementioned Lullingstone
deposits. These are in a finer fabric than the formally similar vessel found
in Kiln III at Mucking, ostensibly the latest of the six kilns on that site
and possibly operating in the fourth century (Jones and Rodwell 1973, no.
18; the dating published therein has since been challenged —M.U. Jones and
V. Swan, pers. comm.), and may thus not emanate from that site. It is
impossible to ascertain how important unslipped grey sandy wares were in
Kent in the late fourth century, but they were almost certainly used for
some time after the disappearance of BB2. Much Hadham oxidised wares are
rare throughout this region (q.v. the preceding section),
partially at least as a result of the strength of competition from
Oxfordshire colour-coated ware. The ratios of oxidised to grey Much Hadham
wares on sites in Hertfordshire and north Essex need to be established
before discussion of the issue of Much Hadham grey ware export to Kent can
usefully proceed. At present, it may be proposed that local kilns continued
to supply the bulk of the plain grey pottery of north Kent for the greater
part, if not the whole of, the fourth- to early fifth-century period. These
wares were the coarsest of the grey wares, dispensing as they did with the
labour-consuming processes of slipping and burnishing, and by virtue of
their lack of refined finishing and bulky shapes may have been the most
uneconomical to import from Alice Holt-Farnham, Much Hadham or elsewhere
(see below, this section, however). The burnished bowls and dishes may
indicate that some marketing headway could be made against fine grey imports
also, at least by unslipped wares.
Exportation of Alice Holt-Farnham white, black and grey slipped
grey wares to Kent may have begun in earnest in the final decade of the
third century, or slightly later (cf. 4.IV.2). The ‘rim counts’
percentages published by Lyne and
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Jefferies (1979, Appendix 3) may be suspect on theoretical grounds (cf.
Orton 1975; 1980, 156—67; Hinton 1977), but the figures from Lullingstone
villa and Springhead are in harmony with those calculated by the present
author using vessel rim equivalents; these reveal Alice Holt-Farnham slipped
grey ware to have provided 8—10 per cent of all wares in the third to
fourth century at Springhead and Rochester, and 14 per cent of all wares in
the fourth-century ‘cellar’ infill at Chalk. The proportion of coarse
ware assemblages alone is in each case some 2 per cent higher. These are
minimum estimates, as the slipped Alice Holt ware was not manufactured
before c. A.D. 270 (Lyne and Jefferies 1979; 35; M. Millett, pers.
comm.), and significant quantities of pre- A.D. 270 wares are certainly
present in the first two assemblages at least. The ware reached every
fourth-century site studied in west Kent with the possible exception of
Cooling (Fig. 38) where only tiny quantities of late pottery were found
(Pollard forthcoming, b). The numbers of types of this ware, and of the buff
coarse sandy ‘Portchester "D" ware with which it was imported
from c. A.D. 325/330 (see below), appear to be similar on a number of
different sites, the variations exhibited being possibly functions of the
amount of fourth-century pottery recovered and the length of occupation of
sites rather than of site type or location (Fig. 11). East of the Medway
both the range of types and the proportions of fourth-century assemblages
which they comprise fall off, however (see the following section). The most
frequently occurring types in west Kent are everted rim jars (Lyne and
Jefferies 1979, Class 3B.1Q—13), bead-and-flange dishes (ibid., Class
5B.4—10), dog-dishes (ibid., Class 6A.8—10, 12—13), heavy-bead
rim storage jars (ibid., Class 4.42, 4.44—45), flange rim
necked jars (ibid., Class 1.32—33), moulded rim necked storage jars
(ibid., Classes 1.14—20, 1C.2—5), and flagons (ibid., Class
8.11—14). It has been suggested
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