By Maud E. Cunnington. 439 



A number of fragments of a large vessel of thick red pottery. The 

 pottery must have been thrown into the ditch already in 

 pieces, for it was scattered over a space 6ft. in length, some 

 of the pieces overlying each other three and four deep. Only 

 about half of the vessel seems to have been there, and so much 

 of the sides are missing that neither its height nor its exact 

 shape can be ascertained. But it must have been a large 

 wide-mouthed, probably rather shallow, pan, somewhat re- 

 sembling a modern bread-pan. The diameter at the rim was 

 1ft. 9in. ; at the base, 9|in. ; and the curving rim is IJin. deep. 

 In the thickest parts, near the base, the pottery is lin. thick, 

 and in the thinnest part, below the rim, Jin. There is no 

 sign of any bored holes, of a shoulder, or of any kind of orna- 

 ment. The ware is well baked, red all through, and contains 

 much quartz sand. The exterior shows a tooled and polished 

 surface, and is in places blackened. Pieces of it were sent to 

 the Corporation Museum at Colchester for comparison with 

 the splendid series of Late Celtic pottery there, and Mr. A. G. 

 Wright, the Curator of the Museum, has very kindly reported 

 as follows :— " Although we have nothing quite like the frag- 

 ments from Oliver's Camp, I have not the least hesitation in 

 assigning them to the Late Celtic period. The careful finish 

 of the exterior, the character of the rim, and the traces of a 

 black glaze or pigment on it, are all so characteristic of the 

 pottery of that period. Your ware appears to contain a great 

 deal more quartz than ours, and I fail to detect any grains of 

 mica, which are so often observed in ours. The paste, too, of 

 your vessel is so much redder. But, of course, all these 

 details may be due to local influences." 



The uppermost fragment of this pottery was at a depth of 

 4ft. from the surface. The position (0) in which it was found 

 in the chalk silt (C), and so clearly below the Roman Samian, 

 which was in the mixed earthy silt (F), together with the 

 peculiar character of the ware, combined to make this find 

 one of the most important of the whole work. 

 This small section of the ditch having proved so comparatively 



