Poetovio Pottery Workshops
About
When Legio XIII Gemina marched into Poetovio from Vindonissa under Claudius, its veterans and camp followers brought a demand for Roman-style tableware that local potters rushed to fill. By the mid-first century, workshops here were turning out fine ware, plain tableware, and oil lamps modeled directly on Italian imports rather than local Celtic forms. The industry served the legionary base and the growing river-crossing town around it on the Drava, one of several such centers, alongside Emona and Celeia, that sprang up along Pannonia's new roads. Western Pannonian production of this kind continued into the later second century.
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
- researchgate.net, 'Roads and Rivers, Pots and Potters in Pannonia - interactions, analogies and differences'
Nearby
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