A newly identified RPG die from Gloucester is shown to have been a repurposed quinquennales die which was modified after the officials' year of office was completed. In the light of this a further RPG die is proposed as having been repurposed from another quinquennales die. The implications for the duration of civic die production are discussed.
Quantification of assemblages of ceramic building material (CBM) is now normal excavation practice, but there is insufficient standardisation of methodology and little study of the validity or uses of these analyses. Consequently, it is difficult to interpret confidently the resulting analyses or make comparisons between sites. This paper suggests a simple approach and tests its validity empirically in urban environments where the high level of constructional churn should generate assemblage homogeneity. It then shows how the results can help with site and building interpretation.
This paper explores the development of tile-stamping in the period A.D. 100-50 by the Gloucester and Cirencester civic authorities, and by private tile-makers in Gloucestershire, and the territorial divisions between them. It argues that builders' merchants were used in tile distribution and building reclamation and, inter alia, identifies Hucclecote villa as such a site. It proposes that Gloucester tiles stamped just RPG were issued annually and were used for commercial purposes while tiles with magistrates' names were issued as required, but only for use on public buildings. The evidence suggests that these stamps were subsequently extensively curated. This paper adds nearly 200 new stamps to the existing catalogues and proposes significant revisions to the magistrate dies as a result.
AbstractMarcham/Frilford is a large religious site with a temple, an amphitheatre and a central shrine feature. Adjacent to the shrine is a large fourth-century structure containing a significant deposit of coins, hobnails and bones. The absence of diffusion of the tiles from the temple roof to the wider site suggests that it continued to function as a religious complex throughout the Roman period; therefore the large structure is unlikely to have been a building which would have blighted the shrine but was more probably an altar platform where rituals were performed in conjunction with it.
ABSTRACT There are over two thousand legionary stamped tiles incorporating some two hundred different dies now admirably collated and listed in Roman Inscriptions of Britain. Dates have been tentatively suggested for a minority of these dies, but some of these are inconsistent with the other evidence. Inter alia, by using dating derived from the different forms of tegulae on which these stamps have been impressed, revised dating is proposed. Linking these dates with the distribution of the stamped tiles sheds new light on legionary practices and movements, particularly on Hadrian’s Wall and in post-Antonine Scotland, as well as the relationship between the legions and the auxiliary units. The multiplicity of different dies could be explained by each cohort having its own stamp and stamping every one of the tiles they produced, a practice that all the British legions seem to have followed. The discovery of legio XX stamped tiles referring to Viducius at a rural tile-works in Merseyside confirms him as a legionary contractor; close examination of tile sizes shows that contractors appear to have played a significant part in the production for at least two of the legions.
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Ceramic building material, particularly roofing material, is one of the most common finds on Romano-British sites, yet despite its abundance, it has been relatively little studied. Whole books have been devoted to relatively minor pottery types, but it is extremely rare for a book to devote as much as a single chapter to ceramic roofing material. This book is devoted to the study of ceramic roofing material, primarily tegulae. It considers how they were made and develops and dates a typology. It looks at the role of stamps and signatures and how these can inform the study of when and by whom the tegulae were made. It analyses how the tiles were fitted onto pitched roofs, how these roofs were constructed and proposes four stages in their evolution. It suggests that tegulae might also have been used on some vaulted roofs. Finally the logistics, costs and economics of tile manufacture and distribution are addressed. The book follows a logical sequence considering first how tegulae were manufactured, next their typology and then their dating in order to prepare the ground for the subsequent chapters on stamps and roof construction. The final chapter brings all the evidence together to examine the economic and social data that can be derived from a study of tegulae, grouped together as a single site. In contrast, where a useful assemblage of tiles has come from an individual site within a town, this has been identified separately from other assemblages within the same town. If these separate assemblages within the same towns are aggregated together then the number of individual sites falls from 104 to 85.
Experimental archaeology: making Roman tiles - MA LUISA RAMOS (dirección), EXPERIMENTAR EN ARQUEOLOGÍA: CONSTRUYENDO UN TEJADO ROMANO (Universidad de Cantabria, Santander; Ayuntamiento de Camargo, Concejalía de Cultura). DVD (36 minutes). - Volume 19