Annewies van den Hoek
Peter, Paul and a Consul: Recent Discoveries in African Red Slip Ware
1. The objects
In the fourth and fifth centuries a wealth of figurative imagery appears on fine earthenware produced in North Africa. These plates, bowls and lamps were named after the material from which they were made – African Red Slip Ware in the English language (abbreviated as ARS) and Terra Sigillata Chiara in Italian. ARS tableware was very popular in late antiquity and, though produced in North Africa, was exported all over the Empire, finding its way to places as far away as the shores of the North Sea and the Crimea. Some of the images on this tableware are Christian, while others are clearly pagan or not definable in religious terms. In spite of a long tradition of collecting and studying ARS, starting with the French in the nineteenth century, new objects and unknown figurative images continue to turn up both in excavations, in archaeological surveys and on the art market.
Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum, Walter de Gruyter
Print ISSN: 0949-9571
Volume: 9, 05/2006
Pages: 197 - 246
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