Roman Britain / Learning resources

Trade and daily life

Compare Roman pottery connections

Use two museum records to investigate production, movement and the difference between a maker and an owner.

Start here

Open the London Museum samian fragment and Hampshire Cultural Trust bowl records. You need paper, a pencil and a map of Britain and France. Use the published photographs and descriptions; this activity does not require handling an ancient object.

Try the activity

  1. Create a record for each object: material, date, production place, findspot if supplied and any inscription. Write “not stated” where the catalogue is silent.
  2. Locate Lezoux in central France and the secure British findspot. Join them with a dotted line labelled “connection”, not a proven shipping route.
  3. Compare a maker’s stamp with an ownership mark. Explain what each kind of inscription could establish, and why a potter’s name is not automatically the name of the person who used the bowl.
  4. Write an exhibition caption connecting the object with wider exchange. Add one question that would require excavation records or specialist pottery analysis.

Discuss and check

  • Does a production place reveal every stop on a journey?
  • Can an imported vessel be kept for many years before burial?
  • What evidence would show that a bowl was repaired or reused?

Review your work

Check that the caption separates catalogue facts from a possible journey. A surviving fragment is evidence for an object, not a complete consignment or a trader’s biography.

Sources and further reading

  1. London Museum: decorated samian bowl fragment, object 13144/19
  2. Hampshire Cultural Trust: a stamped samian bowl and its maker

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