Tableware

Soldiers and merchants brought to Conimbriga the earliest Roman ceramics discovered here; their evidence is scarce and reduced to traces. The first pottery to be imported regularly is contemporary with the city's promotion and represents the most beautiful and most perfect of Roman productions: the so-called terra sigillata, first produced in Arezzo, Italy, during the principate of Augustus.

In the period between Tiberius and Vespasian, Conimbriga obtained its supplies almost exclusively from La Graufesenque in southern Gaul. Between 70 and 80, the Hispanic workshops of Tritium Magallum, in Tricio, Navarre, competed fiercely with the Gallic producers and secured the exclusive supply of the Conimbriga market.

From the mid-3rd century onward, production and trade changed profoundly in Hispania, and the great supply center for tableware, between that period and the 7th century, was located in North Africa.

Besides ceramics of special quality, there were also common wares equally suited to serving at the table, such as jugs, small cups, bowls, and plates of various sizes. During the Early Empire these ceramics were carefully made, with light tones predominating in the 1st and 2nd centuries, from off-white to pale orange, in contrast with the dark gray of pre-Roman tradition, which remained linked above all to drinking vessels; these often have the same form in beige and gray ceramic. In the 3rd century, a taste for warmer tones prevailed and the ceramics became almost all redder.