Mortaria Production at Pentney, in the Lower Nar Valley, West Norfolk

This paper presents the results of forty years of fieldwalking undertaken by Michael de Bootman on a small part of his father’s farm at Pentney in the Lower Nar Valley, West Norfolk. This remarkable period of concentrated and continuous fieldwalking has produced a large assemblage of Roman mortaria fragments, including wasters. Although no excavation has been undertaken, geophysical survey in the fieldwalked area revealed what is almost certainly a kiln, possibly a pair, located centrally within a roadside trapezoidal enclosure. The large fragmentary pottery assemblage, recovered from the ploughed land above the kiln(s), forms a conservative group of primarily oxidised reeded-rim mortaria thought to have been produced between the late third and fourth centuries AD. The pottery forms are very similar to vessels produced in the Nene Valley (c. 55km to the west across the Fen basin) so this report not only provides evidence for the local production of mortaria in West Norfolk but also raises questions about the wider interconnectedness of pottery manufacture at this time