THE POTTERY 79 



The pottery at Melandra falls naturally into two main 

 divisions : (A) tte fine red ware with embossed ornamenta- 

 tion, known as Terra Sigillata, which is certainly imported, 

 and (B) the plainer wares which to a very large extent at 

 any rate were made in Britain itself and may be loosely 

 termed Roman-British. To these are appended in the 

 present article notices of the Tiles and of the Glass. 



A. Teera Sigillata. 

 This is the ware long known as Sainian and identified 

 with the "vasa Samia" of Latin literature.^ The old name 

 has now been abandoned, since it wrongly suggests that 

 Samos was the chief centre in which the vases were made, 

 and the new term Terra Sigillata (seal clay), denoting the 

 fine, consistent, red clay of which the ware is made, has 

 been generally adopted. The characteristics of the ware 

 are (1) the red clay, which was no doubt originally a 

 natural ferruginous clay but was probably later coloured 

 artificially by an admixture of certain ochres, (2) the fine 

 transparent varnish in which the vases were dipped to give 

 them their smooth lustrous surface, (3) the embossed orna- 

 mentation, produced by pressing the vase into a mould 

 while the clay was still soft, with occasional variations 

 such as casting small pieces of the design separately and 

 applying them to the vase with slip. The real origin of 

 the ware is perhaps to be sought on the coast of Asia 

 Minor. Recent excavations at Priene and Pergamon have 

 shown that vases of similar technique were there manu- 

 factured in direct continuance of the late Hellenistic 

 pottery imitative of metal-work. It is even possible that 

 further excavation may show some real historical justifica- 

 tion for Pliny's use of the word " Samia." 



3. Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxv. 46 ; Plautus, Menaechmi i. 2, 65 anJ 

 Bacchidcs ii. 2, 22, etc. 



