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intensity can be representative of wider trends. The equation of urban and
fine ware industries with a cash-using economy, while tentative, allows the
developments of that most characteristic feature of the Roman Empire to be
monitored at an intra-provincial level providing a complement to the
military frontier situations.
The trade flows that are represented by pottery distribution
patterns suggest that exchange systems operated independent of the civitas
system, as a ware can be found in more than one civitas without
occurring throughout its ‘home’ civitas. The function of the civitas
system was in no small part geared to the maintenance of tax-levying.
This might imply that the whole of one civitas population was
economically tied to its capital or, more properly, its tax-collecting
decurions. The extent of the civitas of the Cantiaci is not known —
the maps of Roman Britain that preface many notable works represent only
speculation (Rivet 1964, 131—7). It is a paradox that London, the
provincial capital, was not a civitas capital. Frere (1974, 235) has
considered that it must, therefore, have been a municipium or a colonia
and may thus have possessed a territorium (but cf. Rivet 1964,
138). This may have been extensive in area in order to compensate for the
low population density of the London Clay basin (Sheldon and Schaaf 1978),
and, if it existed, would surely have included part of the area usually
ascribed to the civitas Cantiacorum. It is tempting to see in the
distribution of pottery such as Brockley Hill, Highgate Wood, and Copthall
Close type coarse wares a reflection of the territorium in Kent
through the marketing of these wares in the city to its dependent
population. Clearly these wares were also dispersed outside of the London
area (Brockley Hill is closer to Verulamium than London, incidentally) and
much coarse pottery entered London from well outside that area (e.g.
Colchester BB2, Dorset BB1, Alice Holt grey wares). It can at least be
fairly stated that west Kent, in terms of its industrial output and input,
was linked more
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closely with London than with the civitas capital at Canterbury (cf.
Pollard 1983a, 25 1—306). The sale of west Kent surpluses to London
is not incompatible with the payment of taxes (and rents) to the decurions
of Canterbury, however. The lack of integration of west and east Kent into a
single coarse ware exchange network may be seen to date from at least as
early as the first century B .C. to the second or even third century A.D. It
has been noted (ibid., 63—5) that the coinage of Tasciovanus,
Dubnovellaunus (Kent), Eppillus and others exhibits a marked bias in
distribution either towards west Kent and Essex or towards east Kent. This
fragmentation is reflected in Allen’s (1971) type L potin coins,
but was apparently overcome by coins of types 0 and P and issues of
Cunobelin. The apparent independence of west from east Kent in pottery is
thus reflected in Iron Age coins; although this need not indicate political
autonomy, the system of obligation that Iron Age gold coins are believed by
some authorities (e.g. Haselgrove 1979) to represent would appear to have
involved separate networks east and west of the Medway up until the A.D.
20s.
The generation of hypotheses concerning matters beyond those
merely of ceramics must be an important function of pottery studies in
general, if these are to be developed to their full potential. Here two
hypotheses have been examined: that pottery industries of an urban or
fine-ware producing type are synonymous with a cash-using economy; and that
the pottery of west Kent reflects industrial, and perhaps political,
independence of east Kent, with London as a candidate for administrator of
at least the westernmost part (perhaps west of the Cray valley) of the
modern county. The provision of a description of pottery developments within
Kent also provides a solid basis for the making of value judgements on the
social status and wealth of sites in the region: this function of pottery
was envisaged by Peacock (1977a, 23—4), who bemoaned
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