REI CRETARIÆ ROMANÆ FAVTORVM ACTA 41 CONGRESSVS VICESIMVS SEXTVS REI CRETARIÆ ROMANÆ FAVTORVM GADEI HABITVS MMVIII BONN 2010 I © The individual authors ISSN 0484-3401 Published by the REI CRETARIÆ ROMANÆ FAVTORES, an international learned society Editorial committee: Dario Bernal Casasola Tatjana Cvjetićanin Philip M. Kenrick Simonetta Menchelli General Editor: Susanne Biegert Typesetting and layout: ars archäologie redaktion satz, Hegewiese 61, D-61389 Schmitten/Ts. Printed and bound by: Druckhaus »THOMAS MÜNTZER« GmbH, D–99947 Bad Langensalza Enquiries concerning membership should be addressed to The Treasurer, Dr. Archer Martin, Via di Porta Labicana 19/B2, I–00185 Roma [email protected] ISBN 978-3-7749-3687-4 Distributor: Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH, Am Buchenhang 1, D-53115 Bonn, [email protected] II This volume, on the theme “WORKING WITH ROMAN KILNS“, is dedicated to the memory of VIVIEN G. SWAN, expert on Roman pottery and kilns in Roman Britain 12.1.1943 – 1.1.2009 Vivien Swan was a striking presence at RCRF congresses, always dressed with style and never hesitant to express an opinion and to contribute to a debate. Her absence will certainly be noticed, and many of our members will have cause to remember with gratitude the extent to which she assisted or encouraged them in their researches. Vivien’s early archaeological career was spent with the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of Eng- land, working first at Salisbury and later at York. During this period, her interest in Roman pottery production in the New Forest led to a wider study, supported by the Commission and published in due course as The Pottery Kilns of Roman Britain (RCHM 1984). This is an enormous scholarly resource, listing in 1,383 entries details of every Roman kiln known in Britain at the time, together with its known output; it still has no counterpart in other provinces. In the same year, the RCRF met for the first time in Britain, at Oxford and London. Vivien attended that congress and joined the Fautores, becoming a regular participant thereafter and herself organizing the next British congress, held at York and Newcastle- upon-Tyne in 1996. The York congress was impeccably organized (as we might have expected) and marked for the RCRF a new departure, inasmuch as each participant was issued with a congress handbook of 103 pages. This contained not only the programme and basic instructions, but extended essays on the sites to be visited on the various excursions, and, for the first time, a list of abstracts of the papers to be presented. This was also the first occasion (if my own memory serves me correctly) when posters became part of the formal programme. The following note on one of the opening pages is very characteristic of Vivien’s principles and her attention to detail: “USED POSTAGE STAMPS: Fautores may be interested to know that all the foreign stamps on your envelopes have been given to an international aid charity (Oxfam).” III Alongside the stress of organizing this congress, Vivien had to cope at the same time with the personal stress of an imminent reorganization of the Royal Commission offices, and her potential transfer to Swindon, which she regarded with horror. In the event, her decision to leave the Commission and to work as a freelance pottery specialist proved to be a watershed. Discoveries in York had demonstrated the presence of potters working locally in a ceramic tradition whose home was in Tunisia; this provided the theme for much of her future research, tracing the ethnicity of military forces in the Roman Empire through their ceramic traditions and culinary practices. It is a commonplace of modern times that American forces across the world cannot function without their burgers, and it is now recognized that Roman troops also took their local traditions with them wherever they went. Vivien’s horizons and experience, initially confined to Britain and its immediate neighbours, were widened by attend- ance at the Timișoara (Romania) congress in 1994 and then by participation in the excavations of Andrew Poulter at Dichin in Bulgaria from 1998 onwards. Not only did this draw her into wider fields of study, but it also placed her in contact with a very much wider range of scholars, often working in environments very much less advantaged than her own. To these she was unstintingly supportive and encouraging. Her dedication to the field of Roman pottery studies was expressed equally effectively through the (British) Study Group for Roman Pottery, of which she was a founder member in 1971 and Presi- dent from 1985 to 1990; she was also for many years a co-convenor of the Roman Northern Frontiers Seminar, an important forum in Britain for the discussion and dissemination of ideas. Within the RCRF, she served as a trustee of the UK-based RCRF Trust, a separate entity set up to manage funds set aside for congress travel grants, from its inception in 1997 until her death. Her wide knowledge of many applicants and their work was of great assistance to her fellow trustees. Vivien’s contribution to Roman pottery studies was given public recognition in 2001 when she was awarded an honorary D. Litt. by the University of Wales. Vivien was found to have breast cancer in 1998, but made a very successful recovery following surgery: the experience must have been gruelling, but there were too many things of greater importance to her (such as the Dichin project) for her to become dominated by it. In the same way, she faced its return in 2007 with great fortitude. This time, it was clear that it could not ultimately be overcome; there were, nonetheless, commitments to be met and projects and ideas to be put into writing. Her determination to complete these and to continue to play as full a part as possible in Roman pottery studies undoubtedly prolonged her life, and those who saw her at the Late Roman Coarse Ware congress in Parma and Pisa in the spring of 2008, or at the RCRF congress in Cadiz in the autumn cannot have failed to be impressed by her. Vivien was utterly rigorous in her own writing and was intolerant of what she saw as sloppy work (or personal sloppi- ness) in others. Her opinions could be expressed with alarming vigour (which occasionally masked a lack of foundation), but this did not prevent her from countless acts of generosity. Her two last papers on ethnicity and troop movements were accepted, to her delight, for publication as a monograph in the JRA Supplementary Series.* Following Vivien’s death the publisher, John Humphrey, has taken the opportunity of including in the volume both tributes to the author and a bibliog- raphy of her published works: it stands as a fitting memorial to a remarkable intellect. Philip Kenrick * Vivien Swan†, Ethnicity, Conquest and Recruitment: Two Case Studies from the Northern Military Provinces. Journal of Roman Archae- ology, Supplementary Series no. 72 (Portsmouth, Rhode Island 2009). * The following paper, presented at Cadiz in September 2008 to mark the retirement of Colin Wells as the President of the RCRF, has proved to be a more final valediction than we had anticipated. Professor Wells, who had enjoyed good health up to that point, suffered a serious stroke while in Wales on 6 March 2010 and died in hospital on 11 March, without regaining consciousness. With his passing we have lost a colleague of enormous erudition, which he wore lightly and with great charm; he will be much missed. IV REI CRETARIÆ ROMANÆ FAVTORVM ACTA 41, 2010 FIFTY YEARS OF ROMAN POTTERY STUDIES Colin M. Wells FIFTY YEARS OF ROMAN POTTERY STUDIES RCRF presidential address, Cadiz, September 2008 This conference in Cadiz marks the 50th anniversary of the Comfort, whom I recognised when we met by the (MCC) publication of the inaugural volume of our Society’s Acta, cricket club tie he was wearing. The following summer I in which we published the papers given the previous year at drove down from Ottawa with my wife Kate and two chil- the very first meeting of the Society, held in Switzerland at dren to camp in the garden of the Comforts’ summer cottage Baden and Vindonissa in September 1957. The second vol- in Maine, until it rained so hard that the Comforts invited us ume published in 1959, comprised papers from the second to move inside. Howard gave me good advice and free ac- RCRF Congress held at Arezzo and Pompeii in 1958. Con- cess to the proofs of the precious catalogue, while his wife gresses have since been held every other year, apart from showed my family the local sights. Both Elisabeth and three-year gaps between numbers 3 and 4, from 1958 to 1961, Howard were prodigal of their time and their knowledge. and 11 and 12, from 1977 and 1980. The Acta have for the Anything I have ever understood about TS I owe to their most part been linked to the Congresses (see table 1). I was initial stimulus. informally a pupil of the founders almost at the beginning Howard appears to have been the driving force behind the of the Society, I have now been President for the last six first volume of the Acta, which was cyclostyled and printed at years, and the end of this Congress marks the end of my the expense of Haverford College, with a preface in Howard’s term of office. What follows is a personal retrospective of elegant Latin. The volume had only 37 pages and contained the Fautores’ first fifty years. four articles on individual sites (Magdalensberg, Sabratha, The founders of the Society were Howard Comfort, some- Mittelbronn, and Arezzo), seven national or regional reports, time President of the American Philological Association, who one article of just over a page in length on sigillata estampada spent his career teaching Classics and coaching cricket at paleocristiana, and four brief notices of less than a page each.