Les Martres-de-Veyre Sigillata Workshops
About
Central Gaul's second great sigillata factory rose beside the Allier river, its potters stamping fine red-gloss bowls and cups with names like Igocatus and Libertus. Nearly all of the workshop's export wares left the kilns between 100 and 125 CE, a tight window that makes surviving pieces useful dating markers for archaeologists across the empire. Its bright orange-red gloss carried this pottery as far as Britain and the Danube frontier.
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
Nearby
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