In Small Things Forgotten Redux
Robin Fleming Sometimes the most unimpressive objects, like this little Romano-British ceramic pot, found in Baldock, in Hertfordshire (in the UK), can speak volumes about the lives of long forgotten individuals. To appreciate the value of this pot, which was manufactured in the 4th century but still in use in the 5th, we need a little context. Although Britain in 300 CE was as Roman as any province in the Empire, within a single generation of the year 400, urban life, industrial-scale manufacturing of basic goods, the money economy, and the state had collapsed. Because of these dislocations ubiquitous, inexpensive, utterly common everyday objects––including mass-produced, wheel-thrown pots like this one––began to disappear. The dislocations caused by the loss of such pottery were immense, and it is easy to imagine the ways the disappearance of cheap, readily available pots would have affected the running of kitchens, the rhythms of daily work and the eating of meals. But pots like our...