Vectis ware

Last updated

Vectis ware pot Vectis ware pot.JPG
Vectis ware pot

Vectis ware is the pottery produced on the Isle of Wight during the Roman period. [1]

Vectis ware is a hard, hand made pottery and most commonly very dark grey in colour due to Burnishing. [1] Three variants have been described. [2] By far the most common is the very dark grey variant the other two are a lighter grey variant and an oxidised variant. [2]

Production appears to have started prior to the Roman occupation and continued through most of it. [1] [3] It doesn't appear to have been based at a single location but instead at a number of kiln sites along the north of the island. [1] The style was heavily influenced by Black-burnished ware with limited influence from North Gaulish styles. [1] [3]

It was the most common form of pottery found at Brading Roman Villa. [3] It has also been found used as grave goods. [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fishbourne Roman Palace</span> Roman palace near Chichester in West Sussex, England

Fishbourne Roman Palace is in the village of Fishbourne, Chichester in West Sussex. The palace is the largest Roman residence north of the Alps, and has an unusually early date of 75 AD, around thirty years after the Roman conquest of Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barry Cunliffe</span> English archaeologist

Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe,, known as Barry Cunliffe, is a British archaeologist and academic. He was Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 2007. Since 2007, he has been an emeritus professor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terra sigillata</span>

Terra sigillata is a term with at least three distinct meanings: as a description of medieval medicinal earth; in archaeology, as a general term for some of the fine red Ancient Roman pottery with glossy surface slips made in specific areas of the Roman Empire; and more recently, as a description of a contemporary studio pottery technique supposedly inspired by ancient pottery. Usually roughly translated as 'sealed earth', the meaning of 'terra sigillata' is 'clay bearing little images', not 'clay with a sealed (impervious) surface'. The archaeological term is applied, however, to plain-surfaced pots as well as those decorated with figures in relief.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unstan ware</span> Type of pottery

Unstan ware is the name used by archaeologists for a type of finely made and decorated Neolithic pottery from the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. Typical are elegant and distinctive shallow bowls with a band of grooved patterning below the rim, a type of decoration which was created using a technique known as "stab-and-drag". A second version consists of undecorated, round-bottomed bowls. Some of the bowls had bits of volcanic rock included in the clay to make them stronger. Bone tools were used to burnish the surfaces to make them shiny and impermeable.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brading</span> Human settlement in England

The ancient 'Kynges Towne' of Brading is the main town of the civil parish of the same name. The ecclesiastical parish of Brading used to cover about a tenth of the Isle of Wight. The civil parish now includes the town itself and Adgestone, Morton, Nunwell and other outlying areas between Ryde, St Helens, Bembridge, Sandown and Arreton. Alverstone was transferred to the Newchurch parish some thirty years ago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the Isle of Wight</span> Island south of the Solent

The Isle of Wight is rich in historical and archaeological sites, from prehistoric fossil beds with dinosaur remains, to dwellings and artefacts dating back to the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Roman periods.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minoan pottery</span> Pottery from Bronze Age Crete

Minoan pottery has been used as a tool for dating the mute Minoan civilization. Its restless sequence of quirky maturing artistic styles reveals something of Minoan patrons' pleasure in novelty while they assist archaeologists in assigning relative dates to the strata of their sites. Pots that contained oils and ointments, exported from 18th century BC Crete, have been found at sites through the Aegean islands and mainland Greece, on Cyprus, along coastal Syria and in Egypt, showing the wide trading contacts of the Minoans.

Michael Gordon Fulford, is a British archaeologist and academic, specialising in the British Iron Age, Roman Britain and landscape archaeology. He has been Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading since 1993.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brading Roman Villa</span> Archaeological museum in Brading, England

Brading Roman Villa was a Roman courtyard villa which has been excavated and put on public display in Brading on the Isle of Wight.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Levantine pottery</span> Pottery from the Levant

Pottery and ceramics have been produced in the Levant since prehistoric times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minyan ware</span>

Minyan ware is a broad archaeological term describing varieties of a particular style of Aegean burnished pottery associated with the Middle Helladic period. The term was coined in the 19th century by German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann after discovering the pottery in Orchomenos, Greece. Excavations conducted during the 1960s confirmed that Minyan ware evolved from the burnished pottery developed by the Tiryns culture of the Early Helladic III period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Haji pottery</span> Japanese pottery

Haji pottery is a type of plain, unglazed, reddish-brown Japanese pottery or earthenware that was produced during the Kofun, Nara, and Heian periods of Japanese history. It was used for both ritual and utilitarian purposes, and many examples have been found in Japanese tombs, where they form part of the basis of dating archaeological sites.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black-burnished ware</span> Type of pottery

Black-burnished ware is a type of Romano-British ceramic. Burnishing is a pottery treatment in which the surface of the pot is polished, using a hard smooth surface. The classification includes two entirely different pottery types which share many stylistic characteristics. Black burnished ware 1 (BB1), is a black, coarse and gritty fabric. Vessels are hand made. Black burnished ware 2 (BB2) is a finer, grey-coloured, wheel thrown fabric.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dark faced burnished ware</span>

Dark faced burnished ware or DFBW is the second oldest form of pottery developed in the western world, the oldest being Dotted wavy line pottery from Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ictis</span>

Ictis, or Iktin, is or was an island described as a tin trading centre in the Bibliotheca historica of the Sicilian-Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, writing in the first century BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crambeck Ware</span> Historic pottery style

Crambeck Ware is a type of Romano-British ceramic produced in North Yorkshire primarily in the 4th century AD.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hakra Ware culture</span> Indus Valley material culture

Hakra Ware culture was a material culture which is contemporaneous with the early Harappan Ravi phase culture of the Indus Valley in Northern India and eastern-Pakistan. This culture arises in the 4th millennium with the first remnants of Hakra Ware pottery appearing near Jalilpur on the Ravi River about 80 miles (130 km) southwest of Harrappa in 1972. Along with this, numerous other areas including Kunal, Dholavira, Bhirrana, Girwas, Farmana and Rakhigarhi areas of India contained Hakra Ware pottery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sandy ware</span> Historic pottery style of Britain

Sandy ware, also known as Early Medieval Sandy ware, is a type of pottery found in Great Britain from the sixth through the fourteenth centuries. The pottery fabric is tempered with enough quartz sand mixed in with the clay for it to be visible in the fabric of the pot. Sandy ware was commonly used in Southeast England and the East Midlands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ancient Egyptian pottery</span>

Ancient Egyptian pottery includes all objects of fired clay from ancient Egypt. First and foremost, ceramics served as household wares for the storage, preparation, transport, and consumption of food, drink, and raw materials. Such items include beer and wine mugs and water jugs, but also bread moulds, fire pits, lamps, and stands for holding round vessels, which were all commonly used in the Egyptian household. Other types of pottery served ritual purposes. Ceramics are often found as grave goods.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Tomalin, David J (1987). Roman Wight A Guide Catalogue to "The Island of Vectis, very near to Britannia". Isle of Wight County Council. pp. 30–31. ISBN   0906328373.
  2. 1 2 Timby, Jane (2013). "Material Culture: pottery and fired clay". In Cunliffe, Barry (ed.). The Roman Villa at Brading, Isle of Wight: The Excavations of 2008-10. Oxford School or Archaeology. p. 165. ISBN   9781905905263.
  3. 1 2 3 Timby, Jane (2013). "Material Culture: pottery and fired clay". In Cunliffe, Barry (ed.). The Roman Villa at Brading, Isle of Wight: The Excavations of 2008-10. Oxford School or Archaeology. p. 192. ISBN   9781905905263.
  4. Tait, Rachel; Tiley, Kate (2023). 100 Treasures and Curiosities from the Collection of Carisbrooke Castle Museum. Medina Publishing. p. 32. ISBN   9781911487975.