Samian: a use-wear perspective

The Roman conquest of Britain presages extensive changes in local material culture. This elaboration of material meant that people in Roman Britain were continually engaged in making choices and selections in material use for tasks of survival that faced them in their daily lives. Material culture is thus first and foremost something used to achieve an end, yet archaeology, normally being constrained to look at material culture in symbolic and thus semiotic terms, rarely looks at this most human and basic aspect of material culture, the way it was lived. There is thus a rupture between what archaeologists look at and the way material 'existed in the past. This study seeks to provide an alternative archaeological perspective on material culture by an investigation into slip use-wear and use-alteration on sarnian wares in Roman Britain. When a slipware ceramic is used, repeated abrasive .activity can cause the slip II to erode and the fabric underneath to become visible. To assess this process samian from a number of sites across Roman Britain was examined I and these physical i deletions were reduced to numerical information. Patterns were observed in the resulting data, and, rather being deteIlI),ined by macro-level factors such as supply, it is argued these patterns are predicated on social factors including status, activity, and culture.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo