Samian is probably the best known and most widespread of all Roman pottery and is one of the most researched, providing an endless quarry of information about pottery production technique, chronology, technology, epigraphy, linguistics, economics and marketing. The 26 papers presented in this volume are the outcome of a conference held at Reading in 2011 to mark the publication of the first five volumes (letters A–I) of the now completed Names on Terra Sigillata (NOTS), which has taken stamp collecting into a completely different realm by opening up a vast new mine of information that will keep scholars busy for decades (the whole series is reviewed elsewhere in this issue).

The nature of project funding was such that it was necessary to hold a conference while the work on NOTS was still in progress and not after its completion. The contributors thus had only a subset of the data to consider. Even so, the first five volumes, approximately half the project, recorded some 4,910 individual potters and some 210,916 vessels, demonstrating the level of production and effective marketing of this ware from the early first century through to the mid-third century. While some papers do focus on this area others are more wide ranging both in subject matter and geography. Contributions are quite varied in content and range from purely descriptive, presenting observed facts, to analytical and interpretative; others are more speculative. Several are particularly thought provoking, opening up several new avenues of enquiry and prompting new questions particularly with regard to the organisation of trade and what marketing mechanisms might have been in place.

Following a very comprehensive introduction by Michael Fulford setting the scene and providing an overview of the contents of the volume, Geoffrey Dannell, with other co-workers, presents a brief history of the work which led to the compilation of the original Index. This goes back to 1963 when Brian Hartley started to collect stamps to produce a revised edition of Felix Oswald's Index of Potters' Stamps on Terra Sigillata (1931). Along the way a British team helped record a vast collection of decorated and stamped sherds from a pit at La Graufesenque thus seeing the formation of the infamous ‘black-hand gang’.

In broad terms chapters cover the spatial and chronological distribution of samian both within and beyond the Roman frontier (A.W. Mees, M. Polak, G.B. Dannell), with specific papers on Spain, Liguria, Poland and the Czech Republic (M. Bustamante Alvarez, L. Bertino, M. Egri, K. Kuzmová, L. Tyszler); the organisation of production within workshops and trade (J.R.L. Allen, A.W. Mees, A. Mullen, T. Lewit, P.J. Goodman); case studies of individual potter or production centres (L. Pastor, S. Radbauer); the consideration of pre-consumption and consumption deposits (M. Weber, P. Webster, S. Willis, C. Viegas); iconography (J. Bird, J. and P. Webster); typology (G. Monteil); imitations (E. Biddulph); and social context (M. Pitts). Few authors address the circumstances which might have led to the demise of the samian industry although this is alluded to in Fulford's introduction.

Samian has long been singled out and accorded different attention and recording to other types of pottery. To some extent this is understandable given the unique and somewhat ubiquitous character of the material which is distributed across and beyond the Roman Empire and the wealth of information it gives leading to its own area of specialism. It has also meant that trying to look at it holistically as part of a bigger ceramic assemblage has until relatively recently been quite difficult due to different recording methods. This problem is being addressed by trying to train ceramic specialists to identify samian more accurately with regard to source and vessel form without recourse to the specialist and to introduce a more standardised method of quantified recording so that not only can samian be compared on an intra-site basis, but it can also be seen as part of the wider picture in terms of site interpretation. To this end the publication of NOTS will become an invaluable resource for identifying stamps and thus dating vessels. The papers presented in this volume give us just a glimpse of the opportunities it presents, but also underline the importance of rigorous recording.

The authors and editors are to be congratulated for the speedy production of the volume following the conference. The book is well produced with clear, consistent illustrations throughout. The main issue perhaps is the price which means that the main distribution of this volume, unlike samian, will be limited largely to subscribing libraries rather than a wider student/researcher population. It is nevertheless a valuable and informative read not only for scholars interested in samian and epigraphy but also for those concerned with the social and economic dynamics of the Roman Empire and opens up several new perspectives on artefact studies. Let us hope it does not mark the end of an era of work but is a springboard for a whole range of new research and further interrogation.