Aerial view of ancient clay extraction area, Sermaize, France© Louis Florin, INRAP
Posted on 10/16/2026 7:15:37 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
A complete Roman pottery workshop laid out on a grid has been discovered in northern France by archaeologists led by Louis Florin of the French National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), according to a report in La Brújula Verde. The five-acre site was occupied between the first century B.C. and the third century A.D. It includes some 50 clay extraction pits, areas for preparing clay and shaping pots with wheels, and 21 kilns. The workshop was situated on the Agrippa Road, one of a network of Roman roads that made the transport of finished pots possible. The excavation also uncovered hearths, ovens, wells, food waste, and storage jars left behind by the potters who lived at the workshop. To read about Roman pottery workshops uncovered in Germany, go to "The Road Almost Taken."
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
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Aerial view of ancient clay extraction area, Sermaize, France© Louis Florin, INRAP
Good! Now the Muzzies have a place to make their falafels!
Looks like France went to pot a long time ago, eh?
Very high quality ceramics exported all over the Western Roman Empire.
Even those of modest means had access to it. Villagers in the Apennines lived in stone houses and ate off it. Many parts of rural Western Europe probably did not achieve as high a material level again until the 19th century.
In some places I think production was curtailed because they literally ran out of forest to burn in the kilns.
One of my pipe dreams is to get a nice bit of red samian ware for the house. Higher priority stuff is generally going to remain in the way of that though.🥲
“”Pottery exports from Roman Gaul consisted primarily of terra sigillata (also known as Samian ware).””
Until those ancient Chinese stole the technology for themselves!..............
You see excavation sites like this, with advanced, almost industrial pottery production, or the Roman mines with the hydraulic water systems, and realize how much more advanced our technology might be today if the Roman Empire didn’t completely collapse into the Dark Ages with all technology being completely lost for a thousand years. The Dark Ages were aptly named. I know there is an argument that the Eastern Roman Empire kept the flame alive but during the Dark Ages, it almost collapsed several times and didn’t really stabilize and start thriving again until Basil II (and then only for about 150 years). Archeology has focused more on economic statistics through looking at things like trash pits and connecting them to sites like this and more and more, the myth that Rome was not an economically advanced empire is falling away.
Thanks, SunkenCiv.
So they found a pottery barn?
-PJ
imho the biggest problem after the replacement of Roman rule in western Europe (incl. Britain) was the constant struggle over local control, with both the none-too-neighborly neighboring petty kingdoms and by larger polities, such as the Gallic Empire under Charlemagne.
During the Roman Crisis of the Third Century, the economy of the region had actually boomed, but during the early Middle Ages the only source of quality and/or high-status goods was Constantinople, and the trade was by seal, and everything probably cost a lot.
Every little coastal hamlet could and often did harbor pirates, a problem that Rome had eliminated early in the imperial period.
Abandonment of Roman cities had disrupted crafts, mechanical trades, and various other specialties, and the barbarians (IOW, most of us have ancestors of that time and place) lived in pretty squalid conditions.
You cracked it, Pottery Barn was founded in Iron Age France. Same thing can be said of Ikea and Iron Age Sweden.
That guy used to work at Silicon Graphics. [deep time internet meme, back before we had those]
My pleasure.
I laughed, but falafel about it later.
A fish that size? It’s probably thinking the same thing about me.
Did they find a sign saying “If you break it, you bought it” in Latin?
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