Samian ware can in a certain way be considered as the "Wedgwood of the Romans". Originating from Hellenistic so called "Megarian Bowls", these ceramics were made in moulds and thus allowed mass-production. The first great production centers were started in the 1st century B.C. in Italy, where so called "Arretine" was made near Arezzo. In the first century AD, the South Gaulish ateliers took over the market, dominated by the plants at La Graufesenque near Millau in Southern France. One of the last satellites of La Graufesenque was the small center of Banassac.
Samian Ware from Banassac was in the first half of the 2nd century AD mainly distributed in Southern Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Hungary. It is rarely found in The Netherlands, Belgium and the UK, suggesting that those areas had other sources for their Samian supply. Most users of these pages are therefore expected to come from the German speaking area. These pages are free to use. However, the author would be glad to receive JPGs with unrecorded figure types. Please mail them in MIME format.
See for a general introduction and short bibliography the book by Peter Webster. More specialised items about decorated and plain samian can be found in the books by Allard Mees and Marinus Polak.
Older publications with Banassac Samian mostly presented drawings of the motives. Considering the doubtful quality of such reproductions, one may ask what the scientific use of these publications were. Work on this catalogue was started in 1991; at that time, mainly traditional techniques were used. Before that, a huge catalogue of La Graufesenque figure types had been been compiled, but no interest for publishing in a traditional way could be noticed. Hence, this way of publishing the Banassac material might be considered as a prelude for bigger work on the major plant of South Gaulish Samian, La Graufesenque. The plaster casts made from the sherds were photographed in the Landesdenkmalamt Baden-Würrtemberg, Stuttgart (D). Dieter Planck und Christoph Unz kindly encouraged me to continue this project. The original photos were made by Carmen Klinkert, Karl Natter and myself. Thanks to the support of the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum at Mainz, where Barbara Pferdehirt and Konrad Weidemann advised and encouraged me to continue working on the subject, these pages could be brought on the level you are now looking at. Please note, however, that it was never done as a paid full time job, thus you may find lots of inconsistencies for which I do apologize.
Mr. Gilbert Fages, La Canourgue (F), kindly permitted publication of this material, hitherto badly published and hardly accessible. The Landesdenkmalamt Baden-Württemberg, especially Dieter Planck and Christoph Unz, kindly helped me by providing the photos from the plaster casts. The Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum maintains these pages.
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