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The Roman Pottery of Kent
by Dr Richard J. Pollard  -  Chapter 2  page 21
Doctoral thesis completed in 1982, published 1988

colour-coated and ‘Eggshell’ wares; the term ‘coarse’ is used solely in the cases of Dales ware and Romano-Saxon ware, whilst ‘fine’ is restricted to the paint on Rhenish ware, and to the general description of St. Rémy ware. The description of the heterogeneous ‘Romano-Saxon wares’ includes the inference that colour-coated wares are not considered to be coarse (ibid., 15), in which case the reader is left to reflect upon why they are discussed in detail in a volume entitled ‘Romano-British coarse pottery’. Swan’s guide to Pottery in Roman Britain (1975a) also fails to define the terms ‘fine’ and ‘coarse’, although this may be partially excused on the grounds that they play only a small part in her discussion; the latter term is confined to the description of, as in the C.B.A. guide, Dales ware (Swan 1975a, 21).
   The terms are currently used in two senses, firstly to define size ranges of inclusions in the fabric of vessels (Orton 1977a; Peacock 1977a), and secondly as generalised divisions of pottery as a whole. It is widely understood that ‘fine’ includes samian, colour-coated wares, and wares with no visible inclusions and a delicacy of form, whilst ‘coarse’ includes heavily-tempered fabrics with a surface that is harsh to the touch. This implicit convention is adhered to in the present work. The obvious problem is where to draw the line, and how this division can be justified. It has been argued elsewhere (Pollard forthcoming, a) that the grey sand-tempered Alice Holt dishes, with their glossy black, grey and white slips and tooled-decorated interiors, could have been ‘fine’ wares to those purchasing and handling them, on a par with the dark-slip Nene Valley and Oxfordshire ware products of the same forms (Lyne and Jefferies 1979, Classes SB. 10, 6A. 8—10 (note); Howe et al. 1980, nos. 79, 87; Young 1977a, Types C93, C94). This is not merely a matter of a ceramicist’s niceties; discussion of site hierarchy and prosperity may invoke the proportions of ‘fine’ to ‘coarse’ pottery, placing those sites which used slipped greyware

rather than colour-coated wares at a disadvantage, if the former are implicitly taken as ‘coarse’. The effect on the ‘fine’ ware proportion of a later fourth-century group from Wye (Pollard forthcoming, a) of re-allocating certain explicitly defined grey wares from the ‘coarse’ category was to raise it from under 12 per cent of  the assemblage to over 16 per cent. The effect upon the ‘fine’ ware assemblage taken in isolation was far more dramatic: the ‘fine’ grey ware represented the second most common fine ware at over 27 per cent,. reducing the Oxfordshire red colour-coated ware proportion from over 42 per cent to some 31 per cent, arid the Nene Valley colour-coated ware from just under 18 per cent to just over 13 per cent (i.e. roughly half the ‘fine’ grey ware proportion). Clearly, these recalculations could have a marked influence upon the discussion of ‘fine ware’ marketing in late Roman Britain, suggesting that the massive colour-coated ware industries were less successful in dominating the market for fine pottery than might otherwise be thought.
   The pottery of late Iron Age and early Romano-British Kent also presents a problem of defining ‘fine’ and ‘coarse’. ‘Aylesford-Swarling’ pottery includes a large number of wheel-thrown, often decorated, vessels of quite complex form, such as pedestal-urns (cf. no. 124 here), biconical bowls (no. 22), platters (nos. 32, 33) and flagons (nos. 35—38). The fabrics are coarse in comparison to Gallo-Belgic imports, being tempered with large (‘coarse’ to ‘very coarse’ in grain size terms, i.e. greater than 0.5 mm. diameter) grog and organic inclusions, and of heavy build. However, in the later first century B.C. and possibly well into the first century A.D. these ‘Aylesford-Swarling’ wares represented the most delicate pottery available, and must surely have been thought of as ‘fine’, so far as pottery was concerned, to their users. The relegation of these wares to the ‘coarse’ category as a result of comparison with later material appears gratuitous.

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