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Rodwell has argued that the salt industry of south-east Essex was imposed on
the landscape by Roman state intervention (1979, 160-6), and by the
implications of a coincident emergence of the industry on the Kent side of
the Thames (in the later first century A.D.) and the extension of
rectilinear systems of land division across the Thames from the
Grays-Thurrock area to Cliffe; this must, by the logic behind the argument,
apply also to parts of north Kent (though this is not explicitly stated).
The theory is untestable against present evidence; the 'imperial estate'
has often been seized upon as an explanation for voids in villa
distribution, and for the expansion or creation of extractive industries
and, in consequence, its validity as a concept has been undermined.
3. Other Industries
A fourth major industrial activity attested in the archaeological record
concerns the extraction and working of iron. The extractive processes are
also best carried out in dry weather, but tend to occur in areas of low
agricultural value, such as the High Weald of Kent and Sussex.
There is no conclusive evidence to suggest the combination of
pottery-making with iron extraction in the Weald. However, the coarse,
low-technology 'East Sussex Ware' could have been produced on
iron-extraction sites or centres such as Bardown (cf. Cleere 1970) and
Garden Hill without leaving any archaeological trace. The evidence for both
pottery and iron-working industries at Wakerley, Northants. (Jackson and
Ambrose 1978) suggests that these two industries did co-exist on rural sites
alongside agricultural activities, although the dating evidence for
iron-working at Wakerley is insufficient for contemporaneity with potting to
be confirmed. A bloomery is known to lie in the vicinity of the tile kiln
and grey ware pottery wasters
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excavated at Great Cansiron Farm, East Sussex (Rudling 1986).
X. RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PRODUCER
AND CONSUMER
A variety of exchange mechanisms may have operated in distributing the
products of the pottery industries of Roman Britain (Renfrew 1977, 9). The
potter's home or workshop, a permanent market place such as a forum or
macellum, a rural fair or a religious centre all have the potential
to act as places of formal exchange involving pottery. The identification of
such a place in the archaeological record is problematic, however; the two
clear examples in Britain are at Wroxeter (Atkinson 1970) and Colchester
(Hull 1958), in the forum and shops respectively (cf. Pollard 1983a,
417-22). The concept of a middleman has been introduced above (see also
Hassall 1978); he may have taken on the task of trading the pots at the
exchange places, or taken them directly to the customer, for example a
military quartermaster. The potter himself may have peddled his wares during
the course of a peripatetic production circuit or in special journeys (cf.
Fulford 1975a, 122 and fig. 55). It would be impossible to
distinguish itinerant peddling from itinerant production in the
archaeological record, if the commodities being distributed did not require
permanent equipment to produce them, and peddling from a series of
production sites established in itinerant fashion is also feasible (see
Pollard 1983a, 422-73 for extensive analysis of patterns of distribution
in Kent). Renfrew's fifth model, that of the producer taking his wares to
some central agency, which assigns him goods in exchange (1977, 10), might
be adapted to fit the hypothesis of a tenant paying his rent in pots,
wherein the
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