Crambeck, situated on the Howardian Hills near Castle Howard in North Yorkshire, was a major Romano-British pottery production centre active from the late 3rd century AD (c. AD 270) through the end of Roman rule in Britain in the early 5th century. The industry produced a distinctive range of grey wares, parchment wares, and painted/mortarium types, operating at substantial scale with multiple kilns spread across the landscape adjacent to clay sources and Cawthorn Beck.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Crambeck ware became the dominant coarse pottery supplied to the Northern military zone — Hadrian's Wall, the Yorkshire signal stations, and forts across northern Britain — in the 4th century, effectively replacing earlier suppliers such as the Nene Valley and Dales ware industries on many sites. Its products are a key chronological marker for late Roman occupation in the north, and the industry's scale demonstrates the continuing organisation of supply to the late Roman army.
Excavations by Philip Corder in the 1920s (published 1928) revealed kilns producing reduced grey wares, white-slipped parchment wares with red painted decoration, and mortaria, with the typology subsequently refined by Jeremy Evans and others. Further fieldwork and aerial photography have identified additional kiln sites and waster dumps across the wider Crambeck complex, confirming dispersed rather than nucleated production, though much of
Crambeck, situated on the Howardian Hills near Castle Howard in North Yorkshire, was a major Romano-British pottery production centre active from the late 3rd century AD (c. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a production site site from the Roman period in Britain.
Roman pottery kilns and associated features at Crambeck is classified as a Roman production site — a industrial site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Roman site SW of Kennythorpe (5.1 km), Derventio (7.2 km), Langton (8.1 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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Research the area around Roman pottery kilns and associated features at Crambeck