77 



Zbc pottery. 



Ox nearly all sites of classical antiquity the pottery and 

 other objects of earthenware form one of the most im- 

 portant parts of the excavator's harvest. This is due 

 partly to the fact that in early times clay was commonly 

 employed for almost all utensils of household use and 

 furniture, and partly to the fact that, however fragile an 

 earthenware vessel may be in itself, its fragments, if only 

 it has been properly fired, are practically indestructible. 

 They offer little temptation to the treasure-hunter and are 

 far less liable to destruction by time and the elements 

 than are wood and most of the metals. One may therefore 

 be sure of finding abundance of pottery on almost all 

 ancient sites, and it thus becomes one of the best sources 

 of evidence for determining the date of the site and its 

 relations to contemporary civilization. 



At Melandra, indeed, the importance of the pottery is 

 limited by the fact that we are dealing with a fortified 

 camp occupied merely by an Auxiliary cohort (see pp. 12 f.) 

 where one cannot expect to find either any distinctive local 

 fabric or any considerable number of vases of the finest 

 type. Moreover, the length of time during which the 

 camp was occupied prevents one from having any such 

 fixed date to assign to the vases found as one has for 

 example in the case of the camps recently excavated at 

 Haltern and Hofheim in Germany. What we do get is 

 just a representative collection of vases or fragments 

 illustrating the fabrics commonly in use during the Eoman 

 military occupation of Britain, and its interest lies not in 

 any beauty or variety of ware but rather in its forcible 



