Editing Terra sigillata (section)

===African red slip ware===
{{main|African red slip ware}}
[[File:Roman pottery African Red Slip.jpg|thumb|Late Roman African Red Slip dish, 4th century AD]]

African red slip ware (ARS) was the final development of terra sigillata.<ref>Hayes 1972 and Hayes 1980 are the standard reference works:  Hayes 1997, pp. 59–64 provides a succinct summary.</ref>   While the products of the Italian and Gaulish red-gloss industries flourished and were exported from their places of manufacture for at most a century or two each, ARS production continued for more than 500 years.  The centres of production were in the Roman provinces of [[Africa (Roman province)|Africa Proconsularis]], [[Byzacena]] and [[Numidia]]; that is, modern [[Tunisia]] and part of eastern [[Algeria]].  From about the 4th century AD, 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 (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),<ref>Hayes 1972, p. 19–20.</ref> but over time a distinctive ARS repertoire developed.

[[File:African Red Slip vessels.JPG|thumb|220px|African Red Slip flagons and vases, 2nd-4th century AD]]

There was a wide range of dishes and bowls, many with rouletted or stamped decoration, and closed forms such as tall ovoid flagons with appliqué ornament (Hayes Form 171).  The ambitious large rectangular dishes with relief decoration in the centre and on the wide rims (Hayes Form 56),  were clearly inspired by decorated silver platters of the 4th century, which were made in rectangular and polygonal shapes as well as in the traditional circular form.  Decorative motifs reflected not only the Graeco-Roman traditions of the Mediterranean, but eventually the rise of [[Christianity]] as well. There is a great variety of monogram crosses and plain crosses amongst the stamps.