Grave-mounds and Their Contents / A Manual of Archæology, as Exemplified in the Burials of the Celtic, the Romano-British, and the Anglo-Saxon Periods

by Llewellynn Frederick William Jewitt

“Sacred to the gods of the shades. To Fabia Honorata, Fabius Honoratius, Tribune, of the First Cohort of Vangiones, and Aurelia Egleciane, made this to their daughter most sweet.” And one at Bath is thus:—

D . M.
AEL . MERCV
RIALI . CORNICVL
VACIA . SOROR
FECIT

“To the gods of the shades. To Ælius Mercurialis, a trumpeter, his sister Vacia made this.”

The articles which the grave-mounds and cemeteries of the Romano-British period most frequently produce are pottery of various kinds; glass vessels; coins; arms, both of bronze and of iron; fibulæ, armillæ, and other personal ornaments; knives, scissors, etc.; and a large variety of other things. To a brief notice of these contents of the graves I shall next, in this division of my work, confine myself.

CHAPTER VIII.

Romano-British Period—Pottery—Durobrivian Ware—Upchurch Ware—Salopian Ware—Pottery found at Uriconium—Potteries of the New Forest, of Yorkshire, and of other places—Sepulchral Urns—Domestic and other vessels.

The pottery of the Romano-British period, so far as relates to what is found in the grave-mounds of that people, consists, in the main, of cinerary urns, jugs (so called), pateræ, amphoræ, bowls, and vases of various kinds. Of the pottery alone of this period, sufficient interesting matter to fill a couple of goodly volumes might easily be written. It will, therefore, be at once understood that in a work like the present, which is simply intended to be a descriptive sketch of the contents of grave-mounds, elaborate accounts of the different kinds of ware made by that people, and of the modes of manufacture which they adopted, would be unnecessary. The principal divisions are the Samian ware, the Durobrivian ware, the pottery of the Upchurch marshes, the Hampshire ware, the Salopian ware, and the Yorkshire wares, and to these divisions I shall devote some few pages, and in so doing express thanks to my friend, Mr. Thomas Wright, for some excellent articles[41] on the Durobrivian, the Upchurch, and the Samian wares, which he has written. Before proceeding to speak of the different vessels found with interments, it will be well to glance at these different wares and their characteristics.

Fig. 212.

The Durobrivian or Castor ware, as it is variously called, is the production of the extensive Romano-British potteries on the river Nen in Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire, which, with settlements, are computed to have covered a district of some twenty square miles in extent. The discovery of this pottery and of the kilns in which its productions were fired, etc.—one of which is engraved on [fig. 212]—is due to the late Mr. Artis, who prosecuted his examination of the locality with great perseverance and skill. There are several varieties of this Durobrivian ware, and two especially have been remarked; the first, blue or slate-coloured, the other reddish-brown or of a dark copper colour. The former was coloured by a simple though curious process, which Mr. Artis was enabled to investigate in a very satisfactory manner. It will, perhaps, be best told in his own words. “During an examination of the pigments used by the Roman potters of this place,” he says, “I was led to the conclusion that the blue and slate-coloured vessels met with here in such abundance, were coloured by suffocating the fire of the kiln at the time when its contents had acquired a degree of heat sufficient to ensure uniformity of colour. I had so firmly made up my mind upon the process of manufacturing and firing this peculiar kind of earthenware, that for some time previous to the recent discovery [in 1844] I had denominated the kilns in which it had been fired smother kilns. The mode of manufacturing the bricks of which these kilns are made is worthy of notice. The clay was previously mixed with about one-third of rye in the chaff, which, being consumed by the fire, left cavities in the room of the grains. This might have been intended to modify expansion and contraction, as well as to assist the gradual distribution of the colouring vapour. The mouth of the furnace and top of the kiln were, no doubt, stopped; thus we find every part of the kiln, from the inside wall to the earth on the outside, and every part of the clay wrappers of the dome, penetrated with the colouring exhalation. As further proof that the colouring of the ware was imparted by firing, I collected the clays of the neighbourhood, including specimens from the immediate vicinity of the smother kilns. In colour some of these clays resembled the ware after firing, and some were darker. I submitted them to a process similar to that I have described. The clays dug near the kilns whitened in firing, probably from being bituminous. I also put some fragments of the blue pottery into the kiln; they came out precisely of the same colour as the clay fired with them, which had been taken from the side of the kilns. The experiment proved to me that the colour could not be attributed to any metallic oxide, either existing in the clay or applied externally; and this conclusion is confirmed by the appearance of the clay wrappers of the dome of the kiln. It should be remarked, that this colour is so volatile that it is expelled by a second firing in an open kiln.” Fortunately, some of the kilns remained almost entire, and many had been left with the pottery partly packed in them for firing, so that there was no difficulty in understanding the nature of the process here employed by the Roman potters.