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Typical Roman beads
© Colchester Museum
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The first shopkeepers: Commercial life in Roman Colchester |
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Typical Roman amphora (jar) and lamp
© Colchester Museum |
Like a mini version of Pompeii, the goods in several of these shops were sealed for posterity by the heat of the fire that destroyed the city. In one shop, fine glassware has melted and dribbled onto thousands of vessels of red-glazed Samian pottery imported from Gaul.
In another, a bag of 23 dried dates and one plum were so perfectly preserved that they still contained their stones; figs were also found. A shop to the north of the town had a collection of pottery tallow lamps alongside their lamp-moulds, in what appears to have been a little cottage industry that serviced the city. Grain was also found everywhere, not just for bread-making, but also for malting beer in the local brewery.
Even though the picture is distorted by the nature of the goods that have survived – all of them being too cheap or too numerous to loot, and capable of surviving fire – it does provide us with a good image of the kind of market that pre-Boudiccan Colchester must have served. Samian pottery was expensive ware, the sort used for best dinner sets; and this was also the quality of the glass that has survived.
Dates and figs were not native to Britain, but to the Mediterranean homelands of the veterans who occupied the colony. Many of these goods were designed to appeal to an upwardly mobile community of expatriates looking to keep up with the Jonesii, and yearning for a taste of home.
Words: Dr Mark Ibeji
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