The British School at Rome is pleased to highlight the research of Emma Richard-Tremeau, who is currently based in Rome as part of her PhD project at Durham University. Her doctorate is supported by a Doctoral Training Partnership funded by the Northern Bridge Consortium and conducted in collaboration with the BSR. Emma’s research focuses on the production and inter-regional trade of Roman ceramics in the Middle Tiber Valley (Italy) during the Imperial period (c. 50 BC – AD 250), with a special emphasis on coarse wares—particularly cooking vessels—drawn from the Tiber Valley Project (TVP) dataset.
Her work builds on the foundational South Etruria Survey (SES) and the TVP’s extensive reclassification of approximately 75,000 ceramic sherds using updated typologies. By drawing on this digitised legacy data, the project opens the door to new archaeometric approaches. Emma applies techniques such as petrographic thin-section analysis and X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) to investigate raw material provenance, technological choices, and the potential for differentiating ceramic fabrics in a geologically uniform region.
The study includes ceramics from both production centres and rural consumption sites, such as villae and farms, aiming to trace patterns of ceramic distribution and regional variability. Ultimately, the project will contribute valuable scientific data and comparative material to broader discussions on Roman ceramic production, while also enhancing the long-term research potential of the SES/TVP dataset.
This month at the BSR, under the supervision of BSR Research Fellow Dr Letizia Ceccarelli, an expert in Roman ceramics, Emma is working directly with the legacy ceramic collections stored on-site—materials originally gathered through the South Etruria Survey conducted between 1954 and 1974. Using the TVP database, she is reviewing collections housed at the BSR and selecting cooking wares of interest for further analysis. Recent finds include wasters—failed ceramic pieces—that point to the presence of ancient pottery workshops, offering exciting insights into production processes.
