Recent research is shedding more light on how certain goods, particularly durable materials like pottery, were distributed in the Western provinces of the Roman Empire and on the steps which connected producer with consumer.Footnote 15 This paper develops the theme further by exploring the contribution to the debate of three British sites with Antonine assemblages of unused pottery and other goods. While interest has previously focused on the samian because of the contribution that it can make to dating, this paper considers the implications of the assemblages as a whole.
WROXETER
When Donald Atkinson excavated the forum-basilica at Wroxeter he found a series of deposits of complete and fragmented pottery vessels and other finds in the gutter of the east portico of the forum.Footnote 16 These he associated with a destruction of the forum-basilica for which the coin evidence suggested a date after a.d. 155,Footnote 17 and his explanation of the context of the finds was that they derived from a series of stalls set up between the columns of the east portico.Footnote 18 Beneath the destruction debris which ensured its survival in the archaeological record, the east portico gutter ‘find’ produced quantities of brand-new Gaulish samian, arranged in stacks and comprising both decorated and plain wares, the latter including 210 stamped vessels, for the most part manufactured in the workshops at Lezoux in Central Gaul. In addition, there were more locally produced, unused mortaria, some 20 in number and the majority carrying the name SENNIUS, from the workshops at Hartshill-Mancetter, some 72 km to the east along Watling Street. A cache of about 100 stone bars intended for use as whetstones was also recorded in this location.Footnote 19 Further concentrations of decorated and plain Gaulish samian, including some 258 stamped vessels, contemporary in date with the finds from the gutter, were found in the adjacent east range of the forum, mostly in East Rooms 1 and 2, but also some in Rooms 3, 4, A and B. These account for all the excavated rooms of the east range. In addition, and at the opposite end of the building, one vessel was recovered from West Room 1.Footnote 20 Atkinson noted that some of the pieces had been broken and roughly repaired with lead rivets. A collection of earlier samian and coarse pottery was also recovered from disturbed and difficult stratigraphy in East Room 3.Footnote 21 Some, at least, of the rooms in the east range could reasonably be interpreted as stores.
A further deposit from the forum-basilica, in this case comprising discarded second-century material from the fill of the south-west drain, also deserves consideration here. It included the remains of over 70 decorated and plain samian vessels and quantities of coarse ware vessels, the majority described as ‘black cooking-pot ware’. This category included 58 dishes with flat rims, 28 with vertical lip, 26 cooking-pot rims with wavy incised line and 48 with wavy scored line, and 27 beakers. The descriptions and the very small number of illustrated pieces strongly suggest that this black ware is South-East Dorset BB1. The assemblage also included brown ware (11), the drawings and description strongly suggestive of Severn Valley Ware, rough-cast beakers of red clay (8), and mortaria (4).Footnote 22 The excavator made no comment on the wear of any of the vessels, so it is not clear whether any had been used. Even if we consider the quantities listed as rough approximations, the assemblage stands out as different from a typical discard assemblage because of the high proportions of the ‘black cooking-pot ware’ (67 per cent) and the samian (25 per cent), with the remaining vessels only accounting for 8 per cent of the assemblage.Footnote 23
What is striking about the finds from the east portico gutter, the east range and the south-west drain of the forum is their limited range — samian, mortaria, coarse ware (of BB1), and stone bars — with an overall dominance of samian. Only in the south-west drain is the samian exceeded in quantity by another ware, in this case the black ware provisionally identified as South-East Dorset BB1.
CORBRIDGE
Atkinson recognised the parallel between the Wroxeter gutter find and the destruction of a contemporary ‘pottery store’ at Corbridge, Northumberland, ‘containing the same kinds of pottery, mortaria and samian ware, as the Wroxeter stalls’.Footnote 24 This find was made in 1907 at Site IV in a strip building which fronted on to the Stanegate, just to the west of Site 11, the great courtyard building.Footnote 25 The samian mostly comprised plain vessels, of forms Dr 31 and 33, and was dated late Antonine,Footnote 26 while the mortaria were unstamped and attributed to a local source.Footnote 27 In addition there were vessels, presumably coarse wares, of ‘thin brown grey and drab pottery’.Footnote 28 No quantities are given and the material has not been fully published. Both the identifications and the characterisation of the deposit must, therefore, remain tentative. Further, but inconclusive excavation of Site 4, also known as Temple 6, took place in 1961.Footnote 29 Bishop and Dore also comment on the difficulties of making sense of the late second-century destruction deposit.Footnote 30
CASTLEFORD
More recently, between 1974 and 1985, a third large ceramic assemblage (‘the pottery shop’) was excavated at Castleford, West Yorkshire. The pottery, burnt and fragmented, was recovered from structure AL in Trench I(74) (Phase 3), a possible strip building located in the vicus on the road (Margary 28) to the south of the fort; it comprised large numbers of samian vessels (>650 vessels), mortaria (>42 vessels), and cooking wares (c. 550 vessels).Footnote 31 The deposit was dated c. a.d. 140–50. As with Wroxeter, the samian was predominantly of Central Gaulish origin,Footnote 32 while the mortaria, homogeneous in fabric and type of spout, were attributed to local production, very probably located at Castleford itself, though Aldborough or Lincolnshire remain possible sources.Footnote 33 The coarse wares were overwhelmingly of BB1.Footnote 34 It is also worth noting that quantities of similar material, with some joining sherds of samian, were found in Trench 10 (Phase 3, masonry structures AW and AX) adjacent to Trench I(74).Footnote 35 In addition, a large assemblage of glass with a high proportion of drinking vessels was recovered from Trench 10 and also from Trench I(74), where it was also noted that there are reasons for suspecting that not all the glass found in that excavation was submitted for analysis.Footnote 36 Owing to the large quantities of burnt grain, predominantly of spelt and bread wheat, found in one of the rooms of structure AW, it was suggested that it functioned as a grain store.Footnote 37 Since only incomplete plans were recovered, the interpretation of the Phase 3 structures AL, AW and AX is uncertain, though the excavators argued that the masonry structure AW was part of a mansio complex.Footnote 38
DISCUSSION
Each of our three key sites has assemblages with at least two, arguably three characteristics in common. All contained a large quantity of unused samian and mortaria, both types of pottery typically associated with potters' stamps, and, thirdly, if we include the Wroxeter forum drain deposit with its large assemblage of probable BB1, all deposits contained quantities of cooking ware, predominantly BB1,Footnote 39 but also perhaps BB2 at Corbridge. Wroxeter uniquely produced an assemblage of whetstone blanks. However, in the case of both Castleford and Wroxeter the contexts associated with the respective destruction horizons are more complicated. At Wroxeter further quantities (c. 120 vessels) of unused Antonine samian (reserve stockFootnote 40 ) were found in the rooms of the east range to the virtual exclusion of other types of pottery or other finds, while the mortaria were located some distance from the nests of samian and the stone bars in the portico gutter. In other words, several deposits which today might be considered initially as separate assemblages have been grouped together from the outset into just two. Similarly, at Castleford, we have seen there are connections between the samian in the ‘shop’ and that recovered from the adjacent building interpreted as a mansio (Trench 10). Given that this building also contained a grain store, perhaps it served a wider role as a storage depot, which could have included glassware, given its exceptional character and volume.Footnote 41 Despite their similar characteristics each key ‘destruction’ deposit has been interpreted differently: shop (Castleford), stall and store (Wroxeter), and store or pottery shop (Corbridge). Given the difficulties in deciding between these possibilities, such that it is far from certain that we have indeed identified where the goods passed to the individual consumer, it is safer to adopt Meike Weber's neutral vocabulary of a ‘pre-consumption’ deposit.Footnote 42 In so doing we need to distinguish our deposits from Weber's others of this kind which include waterfront deposits, like those from London, and wreck assemblages, like Pudding Pan Rock.
However, Weber's analysis of Antonine pre-consumption samian assemblages from continental as well as British sites also draws attention to differences between them, for, unless the research on the Antonine deposits at Kempten (Cambodunum)Footnote 43 and Gauting (vicus Bratananium)Footnote 44 in Raetia has been focused on the samian at the expense of other goods as yet unknown, these deposits otherwise appear to be exclusively of samian.Footnote 45 Both sites are civilian towns and both deposits are associated with buildings of uncertain function, but the Kempten deposit is also immediately adjacent to the forum. Together, through their civilian contexts and the exclusivity of the assemblages, they recall the samian-only assemblages from the rooms of the east range of the Wroxeter forum-basilica.Footnote 46 In fact the overwhelming emphasis on samian alone is typical of earlier pre-consumption deposits of South Gaulish samian both in Britain, as for example, from the Colchester ‘pottery shops’,Footnote 47 and on the Continent, as from Burghöfe (Submuntorium), the vicus of a fort on the Danube.Footnote 48
To conclude: while each of our assemblages is associated with a different type of site and building — civil town and forum-basilica (Wroxeter), military depot and strip building (Corbridge), fort vicus and possible strip building and mansio (Castleford) — through Wroxeter and the commonality in the character of its assemblages an important link is made between military and civilian. The military connection can also be seen in the various classes of pottery represented, all of which have a skewed distribution which embraces the northern frontier. This is seen most clearly with the mortaria produced, respectively, at Corbridge, Castleford (probably) and Hartshill-Mancetter,Footnote 49 but is also reflected in the distributions of BB1 and BB2 which, while serving local markets in the south of Britain, also had a major presence on the northern frontier.Footnote 50 The same is true of samian which maintained a supply to consumers throughout the province including the northern frontier without any obvious loss of volume linked to the increasing costs of transporting the pottery ever greater distances from the kilns far removed in Central and Eastern Gaul.Footnote 51 In organisational terms each assemblage has a relatively locally sourced class of material, consistently mortaria, but also possibly Rossington Bridge ‘BB1’ at Castleford, alongside regional, southern British coarse wares of BB1 and BB2 and the imported Central Gaulish samian. The Wroxeter whetstones with a quarry source in the north-west Weald also display similar characteristics in their distribution with finds far removed from their probable point of origin; the Wroxeter assemblage is the largest known to date.Footnote 52 Where the Castleford glass was made is not known. In terms of those responsible for bringing these goods together under one roof, it is possible to argue for both a local agent taking care of the mortaria and at least one remote organiser seeing to the samian, the whetstones and the coarse wares. London, and a London-based agent, is likely to be the (British) distribution centre of the samian, as also for the whetstones and perhaps the BB1 and BB2, though the South-East Dorset BB1 is not so well represented as BB2 in early Antonine London.Footnote 53 Indeed, given the overall western bias in its distribution, it is possible that BB1 reached Wroxeter more directly from the south.Footnote 54 Although Atkinson interpreted the east portico of the Wroxeter forum as intended ‘for the exposure of goods for sale’,Footnote 55 there is a further, but not mutually exclusive interpretation, that the finds represented goods freshly delivered to the forum for eventual storage inside the building. The mortaria, delivered perhaps direct from the workshops at Mancetter, were found at the southern end of the portico, while the samian and whetstones, perhaps delivered direct from London, were located together further to the north and close to the entrance.Footnote 56
However this may be, the fact that there is commonality in the principal components of the assemblages, namely samian, mortaria and cooking wares, in all three locations suggests that there was some larger, over-riding authority responsible for organisation and delivery. It is hard to avoid invoking the office of the provincial procurator as the overarching agency responsible for the procurement and delivery through the agency of negotiatores of these goods. Significant in this analysis is that the organisation in question operated at both civil and military sites. While it is not surprising to identify control of this kind over goods destined for the northern frontier close to the point of their likely sale and consumption, the association with the civil authority of town and civitas, where the forum-basilica appears to have acted as an official store of certain goods, is, perhaps, less to be expected. Evidence for controlled distribution of certain goods is not confined to Britain, but can also be suggested for Gallia Belgica and Raetia, and, probably, more widely, on the basis of the similarities of the deposits in question from these provinces.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to my colleagues John Allen and Hella Eckardt, my former PhD student, Meike Weber, and to Geoffrey Dannell and Brenda Dickinson, as well as the anonymous referee, for their very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
