Maidstone Area Archaeological Group (M.A.A.G.)

Roman Pottery Mortaria sherds – Please help us to identify these
From the pictures below, can you help us to identify the kiln site, the fabric and the form of these sherds? Those sherds successfully identified will form a section of the Christopher St John Breen Roman Pottery Archive.
   If you would like to help, please email your suggestions to localhistory@tedconnell.org.uk

Kay Hartley say the sherds are from a fabric made in Kent. It is known mortaria were certainly produced at Otford, Eccles/Maidstone area or Canterbury (or elsewhere!). Work on all the mortaria at these sites and comparison etc could get it down to a 'probable or if lucky a reasonably certain source!
   The stamp CALLEC stamp is impressed horizontally along the collar. All of his stamps end in EC (FE ligatured), or FEC both of which are common abbreviated forms of FECIT. His name begins in CALL, but this is also an abbreviated form. The end of his name cannot be restored with certainty, but Calles is noted in Spain as a name (Holder 1896). His mortaria have now been noted from Brentford; the Charne site at Otford, Kent; Canterbury (2); East Farleigh, near Maidstone; Eccles (1-2); Reculver (2) and Springhead; (possibly a stamp from Wallsend). The distribution points to a workshop in Kent. All of his recorded mortaria have some kind of collared or wall-sided rim. Various types of wall-sided or hammerhead forms were made occasionally, even as early as AD140, but they are essentially rare among stamped mortaria.

Sherds EF-10-279-9525 exterior - background grid in centimetres

To Roman Pottery Mortaria sherds introduction