Research: Late antique pottery
This PhD project studies imported pottery from post-Roman sites in Britain, Ireland and from the Atlantic seaboard of continental Europe.
For over a century, imported pottery of late Antique date has been recovered from sites in western Britain. These imports include amphorae (transport and storage vessels) which are generally thought to have contained wine or olive-oil and Late Roman red-slipped tablewares.
The project will assess the pottery in its wider continental and Mediterranean context and, in particular, questions established models of direct connection to the east Mediterranean. New discoveries at recently published sites on the western Atlantic seaboard have suggested a more complex picture of this transport. The project considers whether the imported pottery reflects previously unidentified networks of trade or exchange between early medieval western Britain and sites in France, Spain and Portugal.
Comparisons of the character and composition of the British, Irish and Continental ceramic assemblages are central to understanding the mechanisms of this transport. As part of this research the typological development of the categories of pottery will be reviewed and the relative quantities of types and forms found in the Atlantic region will be illustrated by GIS mapping. This analysis will be used to consider the economic, political and cultural connections between the Atlantic seaboard and the eastern Mediterranean in this period.
Excavations at the coastal site of Mothecombe in South Devon produced imported pottery of early medieval; a detailed assessment of these finds has already been published.
Project Leader(s): Maria Duggan
Project Supervisors: Sam Turner, Mark Jackson, James Gerrard
