Talk:African red slip ware

we don't need " ware" on this

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ancient_Roman_pottery . Ware is not the common practice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sfsheath (talk • contribs) 00:04, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Experts just say African Red Slip but for the uneducated like me it seems more self-explanatory to include ware. I then have a clue it might be about pottery rather than about an African who slipped on something red. Philafrenzy (talk) 00:40, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

But we don't append " ware" after the phrase when it's used in a sentence. Look at the page itself. THe last sentence of the 2nd paragraph will read poorly if it's " the breakup of commercial contacts that typified the later 7th century coincides with the final decline of the African red slip ware industry. " So we're making people format links when they use it elsewhere. That's a burden. And we're inconsistent. Only regional Roman ceramic categories get " ware" appended. And is "ware" really a non-technical term for the non-expert reader. It has no good definition. It's vague and jargony. Sfsheath (talk) 04:51, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

And yes, I am a dreaded "expert". But I wouldn't be editing wiki Roman pottery pages if I didn't want to communicate with the general public. Sfsheath (talk) 04:52, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

There is no reason why it can't be abbreviated to African Red Slip in the article text. I agree there are inconsistencies in a number of articles but the common name is clearly African Red Slip Ware. Here are some links:

• http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/gr/b/bowl_with_appliqu%C3%A9_decoration.aspx
• http://potsherd.net/atlas/Ware/NARS
• http://labspace.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=348822
• http://www.molas.org.uk/projects/fabrics_tei.asp?report=nrfc&GUID=&fabricCode=NAF%20RS
• http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/42327/
• http://archaeologyqueen.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/history-of-african-red-slip-ware.html

I am sure you can find some links that don't include ware, but the longer name is both less cryptic and has a stronger claim to be the common name in my view. Philafrenzy (talk) 11:26, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Im doing a project about African red slips and I need to find more information on them.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.12.245.180 (talk) 03:23, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Title: why "African"?

I understand that the author is doing a project on, specifically, African red slip ware, but I have come across the term red slip ware dozens of time in the Levantine context, and while the Phoenicians have first created it, it took a life of its own and spread out around the Med. See for instance production sites in

• Asia Minor and probably Cyprus
• Aswan, which is indeed in Africa, but far from any Phoenician territory.

I'm sure there were Roman-period production sites in other regions, too, Sicily for instance.

So pinning it down to (Phoenician) Africa right from the title & first sentence in the intro/lead seems wrong to me. Opinions?

Variant I came across: red-slipped ware. Using lower-case or upper-case initials varies a lot. Arminden (talk) 12:18, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Er, because it was made in Africa. Other types made elsewhere are no doubt different. This is the standard term in scholarship, and it is rash to call it "wrong". It was widely exported across the Roman Empire, which other types were probably not, and is crucially a type of Ancient Roman pottery, just as those made in Gaul/Germany were. I've reverted these changes, which appear to be improper synthesis, and indeed changing the scope of the subject in the lead, but not in the detail below. The LCD site you links to supports these distinctions. Identical pottery terms often crop up in all sorts of different times and places - see Redware - abnd it is crucial not just to run them together. Johnbod (talk) 12:34, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Wait... I'm totally confused now, especially after your last edit.

I arrived here looking for "red-slip ware", which is a term I came across many times, and was surprised at a definition apparently TOO NARROW for the scope, not too wide. Now you've narrowed it down even more.

If there's a very wide term meaning pottery with a red finish, sometimes described as red slip ware, but the one dealt with here is just a very specific subset, then please, write a clear disambiguation.

Till your last edit, the article dealt in part with Iron Age Phoenician red slip pottery. Was that wrong? Is that a different beast altogether? Because Phoenician Carthage is in Africa, and it did become part of the Roman Empire. You removed this source, clearly RS, dealing with Phoenician "red-slip ware" imported to Sardinia around the 8th-7th c. BCE. Is that an unrelated type, or just an indirectly related and much earlier precursor? You didn't say that and it needs to be clear. Whoever put it here thought it's the topic at hand, and it won't be the last person to get confused.

You've now thrown out the Phoenicians. Did they initiate at least some precursor of this type of pottery? Did the Romans pick it up much later from them?

What I wished for: a comprehensive, if concise, intro (lead) on what red slip ware is: who came up with it, when and where; where it spread to and why; when & why it disappeared; the main distinctive characteristics. Is redware the correct overall term one must use, which also includes this subset, or can "red slip ware" be used as widely? If so, this belongs in a DAB (DAB page, DAB tag over this article etc.)

What are other terms reserved for this type of pottery, other than "African red slip ware"? Maybe Roman-period red slip ware? It was after all eventually produced around the Med. How can one easily avoid wikilinking the wrong "red slip ware"? That's what it boils down to for me right now.

I haven't studied archaeology, but I did take a course and read my fill, and for my non-specialist level, this article is very confusing. Thanks for helping me understand better. Arminden (talk) 20:18, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

• This is an article on African red slip ware, a type of Roman pottery. There are other types of "red slip ware" no doubt, but this article does not cover them. The ip edits I reverted just changed the start of the lead to make it about Levantine pottery, without changing anything below. I just restored the old version, where the lead matched the stuff below. I know nothing about Phoenician wares except what your links say, but a vast amount of European Roman pottery might be called "red slip ware", though it rarely is. Most of this is a good deal older than ARS. I don't know the answers to your many questions (I didn't write this article), and I expect WP has a gap here, or several. Slip is a very common and old technique, and many clays will look red - both Greek Red-figure pottery and Black-figure pottery use red slip for example. Johnbod (talk) 03:50, 14 September 2024 (UTC)