Identifying Roman coarse wares

The kitchen pottery of the empire — greywares, mortaria, and flagons.

Most Roman pottery is not samian but workhorse coarse ware: reduced grey cooking jars, black-burnished pots with lattice decoration, cream flagons, and mortaria — heavy gritted mixing bowls with a pouring spout and coarse grit studding the inner face.

Mortaria are the friendliest identification: no other vessel has that gritted interior, and many carry makers' stamps on the flange. For the rest, fabric (colour, hardness, inclusions seen in a fresh break) plus rim profile does the work — burnished lattice on grey-black fabric is a classic Romano-British signature.

Keep and record rims, bases, and handles over plain body sherds; profile is identification. Note fabric in the break, surface treatment, and sooting (a cooking pot's biography). A field that yields consistent Roman coarse ware is telling you about settlement, not just a lost pot.

From the guide library inside Collectors Catalogues, a free app for cataloguing antiques and finds with honest, museum-grade records.

More on pottery

Identifying pottery and ceramics — Fabric, surface, and how it was formed.

Identifying terracotta figurines — Mould lines and vent holes.

Identifying amphorae and transport pottery — Shape equals cargo.

Identifying tiles and brick — Fabric, stamp, and format.

Identifying Roman samian ware — Glossy red tableware with moulded scenes and potters' stamps.

Identifying Greek painted pottery — Black-figure, red-figure, and the glossy slip that defines them.

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