Industrial Standardisation in Cyrenaica during the Second and Third Centuries A.D.: The Evidence from Locally Manufactured Pottery

A detailed study of the coarse pottery of Cyrenaica, and particularly Berenice, in the Hellenistic and Roman periods (Riley, in press) indicates that, with the exception of the total disappearance of locally made amphoras, the Romanisation of Cyrenaica made no impact on the local pottery industry until around the middle of the second century A.D. Indeed, at a time of rapidly increasing prosperity in Cyrenaica from the Augustan period, the local pottery industry continued to produce poor quality goods in general. These were generally of the poor, shell rich fabrics (for these and Cyrenaican fabrics in general, see Riley, 1979), and comprised a wide range of variation within broad type groupings, which were of the characteristic, elegantly curved Hellenistic tradition.When change came, around the middle of the second century, it was sweeping. The poorer quality shell rich fabric was superceded by the harder, sturdier, lime rich fabrics, and a completely new repertoire of angular and corrugated forms was introduced. This development appears to follow a similar pattern in the Aegean region during the early part of the second century, so that by the latter part of that century there is a striking typological similarity between the various coarse wares in Greece, Crete and Cyrenaica.