An ancient industrial district in the southern Eifel – technology, economy and settlement archaeology of the Roman potteries of Speicher

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The area near Speicher, Herforst and Binsfeld (Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany) was one of the large-scaled pottery centres in the north-western Roman provinces. Preliminary work for this application has shown that in an area of approximately 4 square kilometres, up to 240 pottery works may have existed, where from the 2nd to the 5th centuries large quantities of ceramics were produced for an export area, which reached out far beyond the local market. Finds of exported Speicher ceramic stretch from the North Sea to Switzerland. Evidently there was a Roman industrial district in the hinterland of Trier – which itself was the metropolis Augusta Treverorum and later an Imperial Residence.The Roman potteries of Speicher have been known for a long time. But just the enormous expanse and density of finds, which actually imply excellent research conditions, have prevented a comprehensive investigation to date. Now, a combination of modern prospection methods, scientific analysis techniques, geographical information systems and archaeological studies would facilitate for the first time a systematic interpretation of the entire pottery district and its integration into the settlement landscape. This methodically broad approach will be used to research the economic significance of Speicher in Roman times. Besides the spatial and chronological reconstruction of the pottery centre and its organisational structure, the interactions between the production, society and environment are the focus of the project. At the same time, the necessary preconditions for future studies on the export area are established.The project is directly integrated into the long-standing research on pre-modern industrial districts at the RGZM. Particularly such export-oriented production sites which operate beyond the local market facilitate to evaluate the productivity of the ancient economy from an archaeological perspective. Only in this way, economic cycles in the Roman Empire can be determined over a longer period of time. The large-scale potteries near Speicher can make an important contribution to this.