It is a truism of Romano-British archaeology that pottery
is by far the most common type of artefact encountered in most field-work
and excavations. This material has rarely been wholly ignored, even by
those whose interests centred on structural finds such as walls and
mosaics, as was often the case with the early antiquarians. However, a
bias towards brightly-coloured and decorated wares such as Terra
Sigillata (samian ware) and ‘Castor ware’ (colour-coated vessels
with zoomorphic, anthropomorphic, or vegetal decoration) is apparent in
most early pottery reports, with the far more numerous ‘grey wares’
receiving little or no attention. The strong sense of aesthetics shown by
the antiquarians inevitably produced some invaluable pieces of research,
particularly into the figure-types and forms exhibited by samian ware. The
studies of ancient trade, belief and entertainment have benefited
immensely from such work as, of course, has the establishment of
chronologies. The latter field of investigation, invoking the undoubted
worth of both the imported and indigenous pottery of Roman Britain as a
dating medium, has tended to overshadow the potential of this material as
an index of socio-economic matters such as trade and exchange systems and
industrial organisations. The developing interest in ‘grey wares’ and
other coarse wares in the early
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twentieth century, reflected in, for
example, the reports by Bushe-Fox on the excavations at Wroxeter (Bushe-Fox
1913, 1914, 1916), was channelled primarily to the elucidation of
chronology and stylistic affinity.
In general, the ‘tribal’ approach of culture-definition
that was for long the cornerstone of prehistoric archaeology has not been
applied to Romano-British studies, except where these involve the
interaction of Roman and barbarian; for example, in the study of the
Germanic infiltration of the provinces in the late period. ‘Romaño-Saxon
pottery styles have been alleged to reflect the influence of Germanic
taste on Roman pottery (see, for example, Hurst 1976; this claim has been
disputed by Gillam (1979)). It is true to say, as a general statement,
that the single most striking feature of Romano-British pottery is not its
diversity, but the overall similarity in the range of form and decoration
over space and time, particularly with regard to coarse or ‘kitchen’
wares.
The last thirty years have witnessed the flowering of the
study of the pottery of Roman Britain, both in its own right and as an
index of broader socio-economic patterns. Research has tended to be
conducted along the lines either of the study of a single ‘industry’
or of the pottery
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