This is a collection of pages on pottery and ceramics in archaeology, principally of the Roman period (1st cent. BC - 5th cent. AD) in Britain and western Europe.

Atlas of Roman Pottery

  • The pages of the Atlas describing the individual wares can be accessed through the main menu, which lists the wares by class (table wares, cooking wares, mortaria, transport amphoras etc) or source (by province or area of origin).
  • Some of the content in the Atlas is based on Roman Pottery in Britain, a survey of pottery made or used in Britain during the Roman period published in 1996. The pages also include an additional index of non-UK sites -- excised from the original publication -- and a (partial) list of errata.
  • Most links from external sites and search engines point to one or other of the Atlas pages describing an individual ware. These urls will be retained in their current form, as far as possible. Most of the distribution maps in the Atlas were last updated in c. 2004, but are largely based on data collected a decade earlier.
  • Earlier versions of this website (back to 1997) may be found through this link.

Distribution maps (2022)

  • A new set of distribution maps of Roman pottery in Britain is being developed using an extended and updated set of data.
  • Warning! These maps should be considered as work in progress and are not currently suitable for reference from external sites.

Quick links

Alternatively, you may be looking for one of these:

Gloucester pottery fabric type series:
data on pottery fabrics dating to the Roman, medieval and post-medieval periods from Gloucester and the surrounding districts. (2020)
Highgate Wood pottery type series:
illustrations of pottery from the monograph on the Highgate Wood Roman pottery kilns (Brown and Sheldon 2018) which can be sorted and filtered by type, fabric and phase. (2018)
Samian5 font:
a font to represent the ligatured characters used on the makers' stamps and signatures on Gallo-Roman terra sigillata (samian ware). It was developed for the Names on Terra Sigillata publications (Vols.1-9: Hartley and Dickinson 2008--2019), and is also used in the online catalogue of stamps. (Last updated 2014).
Central Gaulish granite-tempered wares:
database, images etc to accompany paper published in the journal Nord-Ouest Archéologie 12 (2001). This ware includes some of the moulded-rim jars classified in French ceramic reports as le type Besançon. (Last updated 2004).