For more than 300 years commercial fishermen working in the outer Thames
estuary have recovered Roman pottery in their oyster dredgers and
fishing nets from the seabed in the vicinity of Pudding Pan. However,
despite numerous attempts to locate the source of the material, this
elusive site has remained undiscovered beneath the waves. This book
assesses the recovered assemblage from Pudding Pan to determine the
nature and location of the site. Almost 700 artefacts have been
retrieved from this area to date, the majority of which are complete
plain samian wares, one of the key indicators of the widespread cultural
reception of Rome, which were undoubtedly transported throughout the
Empire in huge quantities.
The exhaustive research presented in this book convincingly argues that
the material represents an unknown proportion of a cargo from a Roman
trading ship en route from northern France to London that was deposited
on the seabed between AD 175 and 195; it is not yet clear whether the
deposit represents a shipwreck or a jettisoned cargo. Such a site is
extremely rare throughout the Roman Empire, particularly so in northern
Europe, and its discovery could play a crucial role in our understanding
of Roman trade. The search for the site continues, but this publication
offers the first detailed study of a seemingly predominantly samian
cargo in British waters and contributes a new perspective on the
organisation of trade and consumption in the Roman era.
