Banassac
About
Cups stamped at this Lozere workshop carried moulded drinking toasts and vine-scroll decoration, made for a Roman table culture that prized conviviality on its tableware. Banassac supplied around fifteen percent of all South Gaulish sigillata production, a smaller but steady share behind the dominant La Graufesenque. By 117 CE the workshop had been firing decorated Drag. 37 bowls for decades, distributed alongside its larger neighbors across the western provinces.
What happened here
The workshop runs as a production line. Clay is dug locally, weathered over winter, kneaded and thrown, or pressed into moulds for the decorated wares. Vessels are dried under cover, stamped with the potter's name, stacked in the kiln around a central flue and fired for days with the temperature judged by eye and by test pieces pulled from a port in the side. A big firing holds tens of thousands of pots and a bad one loses the lot. Wasters are dumped in heaps beside the works. Some workshops export across half the empire and their stamps turn up thousands of miles away. Fuel is the limit on everything, so kilns sit near woodland and move when it runs out.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →