Roman Pottery Factory With 21 Kilns Found in Northern France
Pottery workshops leave behind kilns, clay pits and broken pots. In northern France, archaeologists found a Roman workshop where the whole production line is still laid out.
A team led by Louis Florin of France’s National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) uncovered a complete Roman pottery workshop in the Hauts-de-France region. It covers about five acres, and the potters arranged it on a grid.
A factory floor with every station intact
The site holds around 50 clay extraction pits, areas for preparing the clay, and areas where potters shaped vessels on wheels. The team also found 21 kilns, along with hearths, ovens, wells, food waste and storage jars the workers left behind.
Taken together, those features cover every stage of production in one place: digging clay, preparing it, shaping pots and firing them. The workshop stayed in use from the first century B.C. to the third century A.D.
Built beside a Roman highway
The workshop sits on the Agrippa Road, part of the Roman road network in Gaul. According to the report, that network made it possible to transport the finished pots.
What we still do not know
The published report does not say which types of pots the workshop made, beyond the storage jars found on site, and it does not give excavation dates. It also quotes no researchers, so detailed findings will have to wait for Inrap’s own publication.
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