KENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY  -- RESEARCH   Studying and sharing Kent's past      Homepage


The Roman Pottery of Kent
by Dr Richard J. Pollard  -  Chapter 6  page 185
Doctoral thesis completed in 1982, published 1988

only at the last-named site and may represent a local potter working in an alien tradition to take advantage of the market offered by the military base and embryonic ‘small town’. Colchester vessels also include examples in both ‘native brown ware’ (equivalent to the Richborough grog-sand ware) and ‘pure Roman 237). Two other forms with this motif are also recorded solely at Richborough so far as Kent is concerned, a small narrow-necked vessel (unpublished; cf. Hawkes and Hull 1947, Form 119C) and a flask with a carinated shoulder (Bushe-Fox 1949, no. 387). The former at least is also in a grog-and-sand ware, which bears comparison with the Stuppington Lane pottery, from Canterbury (Bennett et al. 1980). The fact that the latter was associated with a kiln suggests that the Richborough ware may also have been kiln-fired and an individual workshop or household industry status is thus equally plausible.
   The third example, that from fourth-century Canterbury, is of the flint-and-sand tempered hand-made coarse ware described and discussed above (4.V.3), which occurs in small numbers within the city and in one or two instances beyond it. This ware was produced in a tradition ultimately inspired by black-burnished ware dishes, with standard plain necked or everted-rim jars complementing these forms (cf. Pollard forthcoming, d).

IV. INDIVIDUAL WORKSHOPS

1. Kiln Sites within Nucleations

The two nucleated industries of Kent (6.V) both seem to have experienced formative phases when potters operated in comparative isolation from one another in organisational terms. The Thameside and Cliffe peninsula zone of the 

Thames-Medway rural nucleation may have been the province of individual workshops from the inception of wheel-thrown sandy ware production up to the late second century, around A.D. 180. BB2 production in this period has not been attested on a scale comparable with that of the late second and third centuries: ‘early’ sites, including Chalk (Allen 1954, 1959) and Higham Kiln C (Catherall 1983), functioned at a time when Colchester is thought to have played a dominant role in the supply of BB2 to Scotland and London (Williams 1977, 21 1—12). The north Kent potters’ sights in contrast were fixed on local markets. Canterbury’s earliest, ‘North Gaulish’ pottery kilns are associated with flagons and utility vessels of types which occur almost solely in the city itself and at the supply base of Richborough. The jars in particular (e.g. no. 49 type) not infrequently exhibit misshapen rims indicative of an attitude of ‘quantity not quality’ prevailing in the industry. The small scale of the industry as measured by the proportion of its wares in contemporary assemblages (between 3 per cent and 17 per cent: Pollard forthcoming, d), and its orientation towards potentially the most lucrative, ‘Romanised’ markets, are suggestive of individual workshops. The crude ‘Stuppington Lane’ ware, recognised only at Canterbury, might belong either to this model or that of the household industry. The hypothesized post-Antonine local potteries supplying Canterbury with grey wares would also fit the individual workshop model.

2. Isolated Kiln Sites

These sites are associated with villa-estates, small towns or, in one possible instance, a military base. The fine/specialised products of Otford and Eccles are considered under the estate model

Page 185

Page 184     Back to Chapter 6    Contents Page         Page 186

For details about the advantages of membership of the Kent Archaeological Society   click here

Back to Publications On-line               Back to Research Page            Back to Homepage                 

Kent Archaeological Society is a registered charity number 223382
© Kent Archaeological Society 2004

This website is constructed by enthusiastic amateurs. Any errors noticed by other researchers will be to gratefully received so that we can amend our pages to give as accurate a record as possible. Please send details too research@kentarchaeology.org.uk