Abstract
IT is to be inferred from the number of antiquities of the Roman period which have been discovered at Ewell in Surrey that the Roman township of which it is the modern representative was one of the more important of the stations which research has shown to have been strung out, probably for the convenience of travellers rather than for military purposes, along Roman Stane Street. A recent find of pottery fragments is of more than usual interest, owing to the fact that they are inscribed with names, of which indeed portions only remain, but sufficient to indicate that they have not previously been recorded among the names of the manufacturers of the pottery which was then being imported into Britain from the Continent in something like wholesale quantities. The fragments, which are described in The Times of November 8, were found in the south arm of Church Street, between High Street and the old church tower, and consist of two massive amphora handles, and the mouth portion of a mortarium. They are of buff ware and of second century type, the amphorae of characteristic Roman form used for the transport of oil and wine, having thick, flat, ringed mouthpieces, made separately and joined to the neck and globular body. It is probable that the amphorae of which these are fragments were made in Gaul. The handles were inscribed respectively bvche and oropo, while the mortarium is inscribed innim ; these, as already mentioned, have not previously been recorded among potters' marks of the period.
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Roman Pottery from Ewell, Surrey. Nature 140, 924–925 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/140924c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/140924c0