Director, Mark Allen discusses why anyone would pay good money to fix a broken pot

Our find of the month for June is rather intriguing. It is a Roman mortaria, the ancestor to the modern day pestle and mortar we use today for crushing seeds and spices, and was found during monitoring of groundworks for a housing development in Suffolk.

Mortaria are not particularly rare objects, and they often turn up on Roman sites. However, what is rather special about this example that it was made in the 1st century or early 2nd century AD and has clearly been dropped and broken into a number of pieces, before being repaired. The repairs consist of twin sets of holes drilled through the sherds with lengths of lead used to ‘staple’ the pieces together: no UHU (other brands of glue are available) or sticky tape existing at the time!

Roman mortaria, used for grinding food, which has been broken and mended using lead staples

This may in itself sound pretty unimpressive, but the mystery is that with the repairs the mortaria would have become far less useful and could not have been used for crushing or mixing liquids anymore. ‘How is this interesting ?’ I hear you cry! Well, it gives us an insight into the social activities and values of the Roman who owned this nearly 2,000 years ago, a rare opportunity without inventing a time machine and popping back to observe the people themselves.

If we examine the vessel more closely we see other clues: the spout (to right of the photo) is quite worn suggesting it had seen a lot of use. This is further confirmed when we look at the inside of the bowl. Mortaria were made by pressing small, hard grits into the soft clay before firing, producing a rough, jagged surface to help crush the food inside the bowl. Modern mortaria do not do this because the grits would occasionally pop out and end up in the food, which is not very good for your teeth! In this instance, the grits have been all but lost or worn down, again showing that the mortaria had been used for a long time.

The time, effort and expense required to repair the mortaria would have been considerable considering it was now next to useless as a household item and it’s much more common to see repairs on fancy vessels like Samian ware (Willis 2005, 11.4), so why on earth would you repair such a thing? The most plausible explanation is that it held some intrinsic value to the individual who had it repaired. The object itself was important, less so its functionality. We can never be sure, but perhaps it was a present or had been inherited from a deceased relative or friend, and just the presence of the vessel was a reminder of them.

Archaeology is not just about preparing a record of the physical remains of former activities, it is also the study of past behaviour. Through the physical objects we gain insights into past lives. At a time that A Level archaeology has been scrapped and fewer universities are offering degree courses in the subject than once did, we should remember that the study of the past is important, in that it gives us the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of our ancestors. Perhaps now, more than ever, this needs to be highlighted.

References:

Willis, S, 2005, Samian Pottery, a Resource for the Study of Roman Britain and Beyond: the results of the English Heritage funded Samian Project. An e-monograph. http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue17/1/11.4_5.html