Roman Pottery
African Red Slip
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It didn't take very long for potters in other places to notice that this Arretine and South Gaulish pottery was making some people a lot of money. By the time of Vespasian, around 70 AD, this red, molded pottery was being imitated all over. In Spain, for instance, the imitations are called Terra Sigillata Hispanica.
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In North Africa, the imitations are called African Red Slip. This African pottery was very successful. In fact, after about fifty years of production the African pottery had completely put the Italian and South Gaulish factories out of business! After that, nearly everyone in the western part of the Roman Empire, and even people living outside the empire, used African Red Slip pottery. Archaeologists find this pottery in England and Denmark, in Austria, in Spain, and as far east as Greece. And of course there is loads of it in North Africa. (In the eastern part of the empire, people kept using Eastern Sigillata).
African Red Slip
But, once they had put the competition out of business, the North African potters didn't worry too much about producing beautiful pottery. African Red Slip gradually became less carefully made.
African Red Slip continued to be the main luxury pottery for North Africa and Europe for 400 years, even after the fall of Rome. In North Africa, people continued to make it under Vandal rule in the 400s and 500s AD, and right up until the Islamic invasions in the late 600s AD brought with them a new kind of pottery, glazed with colorful glassy glazes.
To find out more about Roman pottery, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:
Ancient Rome (Eyewitness Books), by Simon James (2004). For kids.
Handbook of Mediterranean Roman Pottery, by John W. Hayes (1997). Hayes has been the leading expert on Roman pottery for the last several decades.
Roman Pottery, by Kevin Greene (1992). Greene is another pottery expert, particularly interested in what pottery can tell us about the Roman Economy.
Islamic pottery
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