a ‘catastrophic event’: special Roman pottery from Colchester High Street

Yesterday (4th November), Trust pottery specialist Steve Benfield started work on a group of special pottery which we excavated at our Williams & Griffin store site in the High Street at Colchester in 2014. This is the ‘Boudican pottery’, that is, pottery fragments which represent vessels that were smashed and burned during the Boudican revolt of AD 61. The pottery derives from the Boudican destruction debris which probably represents one Roman house, including one of its rooms, which fronted on to the Roman street, the line of which is now followed by the High Street. This one room seems to have been a kitchen or store room. This is where we excavated a burnt timber shelf, some remarkable food remains and, buried under the floor, the famous ‘Fenwick treasure’ – and this group of pottery. ‘Destruction debris’ is the burnt material which survives in a layer below Colchester town centre and it consists of the collapsed and burnt remains of buildings and fragments of their smashed and burnt contents. Roman Colchester was destroyed by a ‘catastrophic event’: the town was burned to the ground and its inhabitants massacred in AD 61, during the Boudican revolt, when native British tribes rebelled against the Roman occupation of southern Britain. They also destroyed the Roman towns of London and St Albans. The ‘Fenwick treasure’ tells a tragic story, as it was hidden under the floor and never retrieved by its owners, but now the pottery from their house fills in some of the domestic details of their life here.

The post-excavation studies of the material from the excavation are now all in process, and the study  of all the pottery here at our HQ is on-going. Yesterday, Steve laid out the group of ‘Boudican pottery’ on the tables in his office and started his preliminary look at the fragments. The pottery is very broken up and shows evidence of burning: it has been broken and burned by the heat of an intense fire. Some of the vessels must have been broken before the fire, as there are joining fragments showing differential burning, and traces of melted ?glass on a broken edge. All the pottery seems to date to about AD 50-60. There are fragments of plain samian ware, glazed wares, and mica-dusted bossed ware. The fragments represent probably four plain samian ware dishes (table wares) and at least one mortarium for grinding foodstuffs, as well as at least four (maybe five) amphoras of different types, including one of Eastern Mediterranean type. Amphoras were large containers for the transportation and storage of foodstuffs. Of the four here, one would have been used for olive oil, one for preserved fruit, and two for wine. It looks like a domestic pottery group. However, cooking-pots and storage jars, usually the most common vessels on a domestic site, are largely absent from the group, so it looks as though the room which the pottery derives from was a store or utility room and not a kitchen. The pottery seems to be predominantly Gallo-Roman and, therefore, it must reflect the Gallo-Roman background of the people who lived here. The group includes quite a large number of imports, more than we find in later contexts, and this is typical of early coloniae, although Colchester had its own pottery kilns at the time. Some of the broken vessels here would have contained foodstuffs.

However, Steve’s favourite vessel in the group is an inkwell represented by two small, fine, joining fragments. This provides further evidence of domestic literacy in Roman Colchester, and maybe of written household or store-room records – or just that the inkwell and ink were kept in the store room! It was a well-designed vessel and included an inner lip to prevent spillage. Steve thinks that this group of pottery is fascinating, as a group preserved by a single catastrophic event. The pottery fragments provide very vivid and immediate and real evidence of the catastrophe.

The destruction in this one room seems to have been very thorough. The samian ware fragments are red and shiny and look new, except where they are blackened by heat: one samian dish fragment includes a neat hole, which shows that the dish had been damaged and mended, although there were two Roman pottery shops nearby, in the same street, and which were also destroyed during the Boudican revolt. There are also some fragments of glass and a fragment of lava quernstone from this room.

This is only the beginning of Steve’s study of this group of pottery, and much more data will be included in our site report. It may be possible to analyse the distribution of the pottery fragments in three dimensions to try and work out how they were placed in the room and what happened to them, although the destruction debris was about a foot deep and had been levelled off after the revolt. Steve will select vessels to be reconstructed and drawn for his report, and then we will be able to show the group reconstructed. This is a special group of pottery, not only because of the catastrophe, but because that single event means that we can try to ‘reconstruct’ in detail much of what was in one household’s store or utility room on one day in AD 61, which is extraordinary archaeology. We will be able to identify the floor and walls of the room itself, and we have already identified the timber shelf which was carrying a sackcloth bag of spices, including caraway seeds; the dishes and the mortarium; foods such as millet, dates, figs, wheat and peas; amphoras probably containing olive oil, wine and fruit; the inkwell; and the buried treasure. All will be revealed in our site report!

And today, on the 5th November – when we ‘remember, remember, the fifth of November / gunpowder, treason and plot’, with bonfires – perhaps we should also remember the destruction of Colchester by fire in AD 61. Maybe we should have a Boudican revolt day in Colchester…

The Trust’s excavation at the Williams & Griffin store, and the post-excavation work, have been funded by Fenwick.

The images show the ‘Boudican pottery’ laid out yesterday, with Steve; the fragments of inkwell; burnt samian ware fragments, two showing differential burning; two joining samian ware fragments with the hole for mending; burnt amphora fragments; and site photo.s of the room with the burnt timber shelf on the floor against a wall, and some of the pottery fragments in situ. [Images to follow.]

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