Pots From Houses

Assemblages from three different medieval houses are compared. One is a rural farmstead on the Marlborough Downs, one is a town house in Winchester, one is a substantial merchant’s house in the port of Southampton. The composition of each assemblage is compared in terms of the range of ware types, and thus production areas, represented, and the variety of vessel forms present. The purpose is to examine the differing requirements of the occupants of each house and the character of the markets at which they acquired their pottery. The concluding section introduces evidence from a fourth site, a rural manorial complex, as the contrasts and similarities between rural and urban assemblages are discussed.