order to extend the potting season into colder, damper months. Wheel-houses
are also constructed. A wide variety of types of ware, conforming to set
standards of forms and fabrics, is common, with some specialisation of
individual workshops in particular forms and/or fabrics. The focus for
nucleation may be an urban centre or a rural area, supplying widespread
markets.
The boundaries between these modes of production are blurred:
the turntable characteristic of the household industry can, if heavy enough,
be used for finishing pots in a manner more commonly associated with the
wheel, and both modes are engaged in coarse ‘kitchen’ ware production.
The scattered kiln sites along the Thames Estuary producing BB2 and other
grey wares resemble individual workshop concerns, perhaps peripatetic, but
their marketing patterns are more akin to those of nucleated industries.
The lowest level of production has been termed household
production, a mode geared towards the self-sufficiency of the individual
household with little exchange of vessels between households. Technology is
low, and may leave no archaeological record other than the completed pots
themselves. The recognition of this mode of production in an archaeological
context must rest on detailed fabric and construction analyses in the hope
of demonstrating contrasts between sites and correspondences between fabric
compositions and locally available materials. The chances of this mode being
recognisable from the kind of analysis conducted by the present author on
Roman pottery in Kent are thus slim.
The manufactory by way of contrast was, in the western
Empire, the preserve of the giant fine ware industries
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particularly of Gaul and northern Italy. The essence is the association of a
large number of individuals under a supervisor, often with a ‘production
line’ organisation. The proprietor/slave relationship attested by stamps
of the Arezzo industry mark this industry out as the most likely contender
for the title of manufactory (Peacock 1982). The largest Romano-British
industries, including those of Oxfordshire, are considered by Peacock (ibid.)
to fall within the category of ‘nucleated workshops’ rather than
manufactories.
Estate production is likely to have been geared
primarily towards ceramic building materials for intra-estate consumption,
with a commercial role developing in time. The production of ceramics by the
estate itself must be distinguished from production by tenants for their own
purposes, commercial or otherwise.
II. HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION
The practical problems of recognising this mode in the archaeological record
are exacerbated by the apparent existence of a villa-estate economy over
most of the Roman period in the valleys and coastal plain of north-west Kent
at least, if not throughout the county. The differentiation of estate from
household products may lie in the nature of the pottery itself, fine and
specialised types being produced under orders from the owner or his agent,
and coarse utilitarian wares on the initiative of the workers for their own
immediate needs. The mid third-century grog-tempered ware from the Maidstone
Mount villa (4.IV.2) may be one example of a household product.
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