July 29th 2025 saw our Annual Summer Event, as part of The Festival of Archaeology. Alice Lyons visited us at St Edmunds Church, on the site of Caistor Roman Town to talk to us about Roman Pottery.
A delightful turnout of guests enjoyed the opportunity to hear about Roman Mortarium, a regular item in the kitchen of a Roman Home. It was used for pounding or mixing food and can be considered as the forerunner to the pestle and mortar. The Roman Mortarium often had grit embedded in the ‘bowl’ to help with the breaking down of foodstuffs. The pouring spout was, in the first instance not moulded into the bowl but added as a separate piece.
A recent excavation at Caistor Roman Town as part of our new car park project revealed many mortarium pieces. We learned that the artefacts discovered showed signs of being damaged whilst being fired in the kiln. There were also many more pieces than one would usually expect to find. This leads us to believe that in a larger excavation project it is very possible that a kiln would have been discovered, telling us that the manufacturing process actually happened at Venta Icenorum.
Congratulations to Claire who won herself a bottle of wine by completing the ‘Archaeology’ quiz and getting 9 of the 10 questions correct. Everyone enjoyed taking part in the quiz whilst enjoying cake and coffee before listening to Alice’s talk.
Sincere Thanks to Alice for bringing such an informative talk to us to celebrate The Festive Of Archaeology 2025.
