Our northern European neighbours have always excelled in the quality of their pottery publications and this new dictionary of traded Roman pottery found in northern Gaul is no exception. This is a superbly produced volume, clearly laid out and well illustrated throughout with line drawings, colour photographs and distribution maps. All the wares described are traded outside Gaul and are therefore of direct relevance to pottery specialists working in Britain, Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands. Supporting the volume is an extensive fabric reference collection housed at Louvain-la-Neuve (5–6) which includes kiln material, as well as a range of other regional and local wares not covered in this work.

Following an introduction, the first part of the book provides a brief overview of the development of pottery studies; the current state of research; the scope and potential of such studies; the analytical methods available; and various methods of classification and recording. The second part, and the main bulk of the volume, presents a dictionary of a range of well-known traded wares starting with the products of the sigillata industries, moving on to copies of sigillata, other fine wares, and then various coarse wares including mortaria. In total some 29 classes of ware are discussed. For each identified ware there is a full description of its main characteristics in terms of fabric and manufacture, with an illustrated description of the vessel typology and other details such as decoration and stamps. This is followed by a discussion of the chronology and distribution. For products emanating from different kilns, more detailed sections follow characterising the wares from each known production centre. Accompanying the text are colour pictures of the vessels and in some cases close-up detail of the decoration and fabric breaks; a range of the most common forms found; and distribution maps showing find spots. Each ware has an extensive bibliography and where relevant a list of aliases.

The largest component of the volume is the section dealing with the sigillata industries, which effectively takes up 63 per cent of the dictionary leaving just 37 per cent to cover all the other selected fine ware and coarse ware industries. The fine ware section embraces glazed wares, thin-walled wares and the various colour-coated industries found across Gaul and the Lower Rhineland. The final section dealing with coarse wares includes mortaria, Pompeian red ware, marbled ware, craquelée bleutée, and late Roman coarse wares from the Eifel and nearby sources.

The indisputable strength of the volume lies in the two-thirds dedicated to the sigillata industry where for the first time a comprehensive overview of the various workshops is brought together. The section on East Gaulish wares is particularly valuable as these are more rarely found or identified in Britain and the literature is thus less accessible. The remaining non-sigillata entries are a useful reference point but one feels there are some glaring omissions. There is, for example, no inclusion of the extensive Gallo-Belgic fine ware industry whose products were exported far and wide. It may be that these industries are the subject of other forthcoming volumes but their absence makes one wonder whether the book would not have been better limited to the sigillata industry. The mortaria section is surprisingly selective with just three main entries for types emanating from Italy, the Rhône valley (Lyon) and Aoste. There are many other established industries in North Gaul and the Lower Rhineland whose products were extensively distributed on both sides of the Channel. Similarly the entry for Pompeian red ware confines itself to a fairly brief discussion of the Italian fabric without making reference to the various continental workshops copying the ware, some of which were also widely distributed. Amphorae do not feature but we are told in the introduction that these will be the subject of another volume.

Another slightly inconsistent feature is the distribution maps which if studied in greater detail show some anomalies. The figure on p. 36 for example, purporting to show the distribution of Gaulish terra sigillata workshops belonging to the high Empire, shown by the vessel symbols, also has other dots, probably for minor centres, but including one unlabelled one in England somewhere around Oxford. This presumably relates to dictionary entry 14 allocated to ‘British sigillata’ belonging to the later Empire for which there are two entries: Oxfordshire red-slipped ware and Hadham red-slipped ware, whose presence in the book relates to products identified from both these two British centres in northern Gaul. This highlights a difference in how our continental colleagues classify what we now regard in England as essentially later Roman colour-coated industries. There was ‘sigillata’ production at Colchester and Pulborough, Sussex (Pulborough-Aldgate potter), but the vessels were probably not exported south across the Channel and thus do not tend to be recognised in continental literature. In general the distinction between the later ‘sigillata’ industries and ‘sigillata’ derivatives is a little blurred and appears to be based on an assessment of quality and quantity of the product. Notwithstanding the entry for both these British later Roman colour-coated wares is brief with no accompanying typology or distribution maps. Although New Forest wares, also found on the European mainland, are mentioned, these do not warrant a separate entry.

The map on p. 45 showing the distribution of stamped Italian vessels also appears slightly lacking in data for the UK or the dots have somehow become misplaced. For many of the other sigillata production centres the distribution maps are either more limited in geographic extent, focusing on northern Gaul, or are shown as more generalised contour maps with density shading.

These quibbles aside the dictionary is of immense value to all pottery specialists working in Britain and Western Europe and should be an essential reference handbook for those handling pottery. The authors are to be congratulated for achieving such an attractive, informative and well thought-out format. It is to be hoped that in years to come there are still the specialists out there to make use of the dictionary and develop it further.