Late Roman pottery discovered at Histria in the Acropolis Centre‐South Sector (2015). Vasa escaria – Late Roman C Wares

Abstract

The 90 pottery fragments presented in this paper were discovered in 2015 at Histria, in the Acropolă Centru‐ Sud sector (excavation coordinated by the University of Bucharest). The pottery pertains to seven forms with 14 types of kitchen ware. This category of artefacts is very important and, at the same time, very discriminated. Common ware – and most of the kitchen ware is part of this category – is overlooked in favour of luxury ware, lamps and amphorae, and a very large quantity of material pertaining to this category remains unstudied. This situation is common, in spite of the fact that, due to its fragility and the lack of a waterproof coating (which means that in a short time organic matter and mold make it unusable), it had a short life and therefore provides archaeologists with a much more refined chronological marker. Apart from the chronological information, the study of kitchenware can shed new light on the trade directions and the zone of political influence in Scythia Minor during the Late Roman period. The publication of the entire pottery lot from and excavation can lead, now or in the future, to the clarification of certain problems for which we can only make suppositions at the present moment

Keywords

• scythia
• late antiquity
• histria
• pottery
• vasa escaria
• roman period