Introduction
Chris Breen (see About Christopher St John Breen) and other members of
the D.D.A.G. collected thousands of pottery sherds from the Billingsgate
Soil Dumps in the 1980's. These were sorted and identified and bagged
using the Museum of London pottery codes in use at that time. Since then
some of those codes have been expanded and many more added to include
those used by the Canterbury Archaeological Trust.
This archive is intended
to help amateur archaeologists identify and date the pottery that they
find in the course of their excavations. There are a number of excellent
websites (see links below) where pictures of complete pots can be viewed, but here we show
pictures of individual sherds and fabrics of pots.
The present pottery archive consists of
pottery sherds recovered from the Billingsgate dumps, and so apart from
the imported wares represents pottery traded and used in London. We are
now extending (2011) the range of material by including sherds from excavations
throughout Kent, to better reflect the differing fabrics of all dates
from London and Kent
Chris Breen set up a system of plastic boxes, each holding
fifteen small trays measuring 2½ x 5¾ inches, that contained examples
of Roman and Medieval pottery sherds identified by the visiting
specialists. The K.A.S. Fieldwork Committee kindly made a grant towards
this work.
To the Roman Pottery
Archive To the Medieval Pottery
Archive
Ceramics
and Glass, Museum of London
(The LAARC ceramics and glass catalogue is no longer available at
the Museum of London website, owing to ?software updates,
27-11-2016.
However it is
available at:
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090510221705/http://museumoflondon.org.uk/ceramics/index.asp
The ceramics and glass collection is made up of 25,000 objects and
20,000 Roman Samian sherds. It is a collection of regional, national
and international significance. As a result of London's position as
a centre of national and international trade and of manufacturing
innovation and of the Museum's long-established acquisition
programme, these objects are very representative of the evolution of
ceramics and glassware. Many of the items were acquired in the years
before scientific archaeological excavations, when building workers
finding complete objects were encouraged to offer them to the
Guildhall Museum. The collection reflects the whole spectrum of
society, including everyday items and luxury wares