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The Roman Pottery of Kent
by Dr Richard J. Pollard  -  Chapter 2  page 25
Doctoral thesis completed in 1982, published 1988

modes of dispersal quite different from those current at any one point in time. The full extent of a pottery type’s distribution irrespective of differential periods of use in certain areas is nevertheless of considerable interest; the maps here presented should be studied with reference to the main text in order to ascertain whether such differentiation occurred.
   The present author’s maps seek to relate the distribution of pottery types to natural and man-made features of the Romano-British landscape (see also Pollard 1983a, 415—73). The non-random behaviour that such features may induce need not always be apparent in the spatial patterning of artefacts or sites, however (Hodder and Orton 1976, 9). Cumulatively, the range of factors that could have influenced the dispersal of pottery may produce a random pattern. A subjective approach to interpretation might result in the false identification of structure in random patterns (ibid., 4—8). The objective search for non-random patterning of artefact and site distributions has been one of the major developments in spatial analysis in recent years, but it should not be overlooked that the identification of such patterning is not an end in itself. The processes that resulted in random or non-random patterns remain to be identified; ‘one spatial pattern may be produced by a variety of different spatial processes. . . .often one must look to non-spatial evidence to corroborate or disprove theories about spatial processes’ (ibid., 8).
   The distribution maps published here have not been subjected to tests for randomness. There are two reasons for this omission. Firstly, it was considered (subjectively) that the patterns could be interpreted with reference to kiln/production area location in many instances (e.g. Fig. 22, 48) or to the operation of other factors (Pollard 1983a, 415—73) which have been investigated by previous research (e.g. Hodder 1974b; Loughlin 1977). Secondly, the nature of the area under study, with the coastline a dominant feature of the geography of Kent, places severe limitations on the value of nearest-neighbour analysis in 

searching for randomness (Hodder and Orton 1976, 41—3). The approach adopted by Hodder and Orton (1976, 44—5) to overcome this problem would be inappropriate to the present study, as it involves the choice of area for analysis such that the nearest-neighbour distance from any site is less than or equal to the distance from that site to the coast. This would seem to rule out many of the most important sites studied by the present author, such as the military bases at Richborough, Dover, Port Lympne and Pevensey, and the civil settlements at Little Shelford (Essex) and Birchington.
   It was initially hoped that the comparative efficiency of the major production units in Kent and the surrounding area in supplying their potential hinterland zones might be studied through quantified statistics. Work by Hodder (1974d) suggested that regression analysis would be an appropriate technique: at a generalised level the fall-off gradients thus generated may reflect the comparative ‘value’ of pottery types, the shallower gradients being equated with types which were marketed in larger quantities at greater distances from their production centres. However, this analysis was curtailed by the weakness of the quantified data base. An alternative approach to regression analysis, involving the measurement of the density of sites with the pottery type under review in bands around the type’s source, would seem to be inappropriate in the case of Kent owing to its maritime location; the density of sites greater than 10 km. from either Canterbury or the Cliffe Peninsula area kilns (producing BB2 and grey wares) would inevitably show a marked fall-off due to the inclusion of the Thames Estuary and English Channel in the bands. In the event, sufficient quantified data, expressed in the form of the proportion of one pottery type in assemblages, was collected for one small study to be undertaken (Fig. 48). The number of points was considered to be too small to warrant detailed analysis, but a marked fall-off in quantities outside 10 km. radii from the BB2 kilns around the Cliffe Peninsula is

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