People have been collecting Samian pottery off the coast of Whitstable in Kent since the 18th century and possibly as early as the Tudor period. Assumed to be the scattered cargo of a Roman shipwreck, the pottery carries the distinctive wear and encrustations of centuries lying in sand banks and oyster beds. The pottery may have inspired the name of Pudding Pan, the area of seabed from which much of the pottery has been recovered, which in turn gave its name to the pottery assemblage as a whole. Hundreds of pottery vessels are known, but having disappeared into various museum and private collections, and with its context considered too nebulous, the material has largely been ignored as a subject of serious academic study.
Michael Walsh's book, however, which presents the results of the author's exhaustive analysis of the pottery, its chronology, its context and interpretation, offers a much more optimistic assessment of the assemblage. After some superb detective work, the author has catalogued over 500 complete or near-complete Samian vessels. All are plain forms, many are stamped with the potters' names, are mainly from the Central Gaulish workshops at Lezoux, and date to the late 2nd century AD.
The majority of the pottery is likely to belong to a single shipwreck, probably destined for London. Intriguingly, though, occasional finds of early and late Roman date suggest that more than one ship had foundered off the north Kent coast. Analysis of wear patterns and damage caused by oyster dredgers provides insights into the way that the pottery was packed into the ship, for instance with the products of the same form being packed together and stacked upside down in crates. Analysis of the potters' stamps suggests that potters specialised in particular forms or sets.
Inevitably, the principal focus of the book is the nature of the Samian trade. The composition of the Pudding Pan assemblage suggests that consumers received what was available to be exported, not what they necessarily wanted. The author also challenges the well-established view that Samian was exported as a minor cargo, arriving where space in the ship allowed on the back of the exportation of more fundamental goods. Instead, the author contends that the Pudding Pan assemblage represents a bulk consignment. The view is controversial, but the author makes a compelling case, though given the small size of the assemblage compared with the 100,000 or so Samian vessels recovered from the Culip IV wreck off the coast of Spain, acknowledges that the argument is not entirely watertight.
Pudding Pan: A Roman Shipwreck from Britain and its Cargo of Samian Pottery in context is essential reading for researchers of Roman trade and Samian pottery. No longer the Cinderella of pottery studies in Britain, the Pudding Pan Samian finally has the report it deserves.