African Red Slip
African red slip ware, also African Red Slip or ARS, is a category of terra sigillata, or "fine" Ancient Roman pottery produced from the mid-1st century AD into the 7th century in the province of Africa Proconsularis, specifically that part roughly coinciding with the modern country of Tunisia and the Diocletianic provinces of Byzacena and Zeugitana. It is distinguished by a thick-orange red slip over a slightly granular fabric. Interior surfaces are completely covered, while the exterior can be only partially slipped, particularly on later examples.
By the 3rd century AD, African red slip appears on sites throughout the Mediterranean and in the major cities of Roman Europe. It was the most widely distributed representative of the sigillata tradition in the late-Roman period, and occasional imports have been found as far afield as Britain in the 5th-6th centuries. African red slip ware was still widely distributed in the 5th century but after that time the volume of production and trade may well have declined. While the latest forms continued into the 7th century and are found in such major cities as Constantinople and Marseille, the breakup of commercial contacts that typified the later 7th century coincides with the final decline of the African red slip industry.
The production and success of African red slip is probably closely tied to the agricultural productivity of Rome's North African provinces, as indicated in part by the contemporaneous distribution of Roman-period North African amphoras.
From about the 4th century, competent copies of the fabric and forms were also made in several other regions, including Asia Minor, the eastern Mediterranean and Egypt. Over the long period of production, there was obviously much change and evolution in both forms and fabrics. Both Italian and Gaulish plain forms influenced ARS in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD (for example, Hayes Form 2, the cup or dish with an outcurved rim decorated with barbotine leaves, is a direct copy of the samian forms Dr.35 and 36, made in South and Central Gaul), but over time a distinctive ARS repertoire developed.
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