The chronology of 5th century Britain

[Jim Webster]

I have no doubt that some pottery was still used, but we have to remember there were workarounds. So it seems the 'Anglosaxons' did use wooden plates

But we forget other techniques at our peril. So meat/game could be 'boiled in the bag'

"A hide cauldron is a method of cooking game in its own skin, which was used in the Late Middle Ages. The process involves:
Making a low fire in a hole
Stretching the animal's skin over the fire on four stakes
Filling the skin with water to stew the meat
The fat left on the skin would enrich the broth"    (from google)

You can boil water in a leather bag by chucking hot stones into it (this technique was well know, we have two burnt mounds that were bronze age sweat lodges)

Yes pottery was nice, but it wasn't irreplaceable.

The debasement of pottery might be you couldn't get the stuff. Or you could be it was too dear, or there were cultural changes. People just adapted.

I'd love to see the sorts of pottery found in ordinary rural locations in, for example, the  3rd century, to see what sort of pottery people were using as part of cooking and preparing food.

[Erpingham]

The "boil in the bag" method was certainly used by the medieval Scots. The only cooking gear a Scottish army allegedly needed was a flat stone to stick in the fire to bake oatcakes and the skins of the cattle they'd rustled.

[Imperial Dave]

Yum yum lol 

[Justin Swanton]

I might have to resurrect this thread with some of the stuff I have been reading about in the intervening 3 years....

I suppose the acid test is whether those three years of reading have turned up any new evidence or at least non-trivial shifts in interpretation.

I can give the evidence for how pottery worked in northern Gaul in this period - did some research on it when looking into the state of Syagrius' realm in the late 5th century. It would very well explain the collapse of pottery in Britain in a time of ongoing or at least frequent warfare.

Otherwise I'm sure everyone remains on their positions. Nor knaw nowt about owt seems to be the common trend. 

[Keraunos]

Has anyone ever estimated the proportion of the population of Roman Britain who were using glazed pottery eating vessels, as opposed to traditional local craft materials, and hence how much of a change the loss of centralised pottery production was to most people in post Roman Britain?

[Erpingham]

IIRC, you also had in Roman Britain itinerant potters, who went between rural establishments, built a kiln and churned out cruder pots to meet the needs of that community for a period.  From my limited experience of digging Roman sites, though, industrially produced better quality and specialist products (e.g. mortaria) were everywhere.  One of the fun things of digging a Roman site, as opposed to Iron Age or Saxon is you can hardly trowel down a layer without filling a finds tray with pottery.

[Jim Webster]

Has anyone ever estimated the proportion of the population of Roman Britain who were using glazed pottery eating vessels, as opposed to traditional local craft materials, and hence how much of a change the loss of centralised pottery production was to most people in post Roman Britain?

That's one thing I wondered. How far into the rural population did it penetrate? The army was apparently a big purchaser but in relative terms, soldiers could be quite prosperous

[Jim Webster]

IIRC, you also had in Roman Britain itinerant potters, who went between rural establishments, built a kiln and churned out cruder pots to meet the needs of that community for a period.  From my limited experience of digging Roman sites, though, industrially produced better quality and specialist products (e.g. mortaria) were everywhere.  One of the fun things of digging a Roman site, as opposed to Iron Age or Saxon is you can hardly trowel down a layer without filling a finds tray with pottery.

Of the top of your head, what were the common types of pottery (as in plates, bowls, storage vessels etc)

I wonder how may people ate 'bread' trenchers

[Imperial Dave]

I can't remember which paper I read it in but there was an estimation that one large commercial pottery site was churning out a million units a year...

[Erpingham]

Of the top of your head, what were the common types of pottery (as in plates, bowls, storage vessels etc)

It's a long time ago but large storage vessels, small to medium pots, some footed bowls (you found the remains of the foot), mortaria. My first archaeological job was to empty a pit full of pot wasters ( from large coarse ware  storage jars) - clearly a whole firing had gone wrong.  Expensive error.

[Ian61]

The "boil in the bag" method was certainly used by the medieval Scots. The only cooking gear a Scottish army allegedly needed was a flat stone to stick in the fire to bake oatcakes and the skins of the cattle they'd rustled.

You can of course boil water in leather as long as you are careful because the water prevents a temperature much above 100ºC.
For some reason I always assumed that the Black Cauldron of the Mabinogi, the Pair Dadeni as being made of iron, a large cauldron made of pottery would be an accident waiting to happen or could such things be bronze but handed down through the ages. Never really considered how a large iron object could be made by a village blacksmith back then. Perhaps the rarity of such objects was important in imbuing those still around with magical properties.

[Imperial Dave]

I also read that if the pot(ery) isn't glazed and fired properly, it can't take as high a heat for cooking