File:Mainz sigillata, Graufesenque Bilicatus. Curle, 1917, p.144 fig.12.jpg

English: Sigillata bowl, stamp of Bilicatus (OFFIC. BILICAT.), potter from la Graufesenque (southern Gaul). Found in Mainz. In James Curle, 1917, p. 144, fig. 12. Curle says about it : « Around the upper margin are parallel lines of rouletting, and beneath them a graceful scroll enclosed between bands of dotted lines, while the lower portion of the side is covered with a pattern derived from embossed metal, resembling that upon the last example. In the scroll we have a piece of decoration very characteristic of the bowls of this period. We find it, for example, on the fragments from Aislingen, an early fort in the region of the Upper Danube, of which the earliest occupation dates from Tiberius, and also on those from the earliest strata at Wiesbaden. Probably the decoration of the bowl originated with some Arretine model. In a fragment from Haltern illustrated by Herr Hahnle, which bears the stamp BARGATES, we have not only the same imitation of embossed metal, but also a scroll which has much in common with this design. An example of this type of bowl occurs among some Roman objects found at Plesheybury, in Essex, now in the museum at probably made in the third or possibly in the beginning of the fourth decade of the first century, and represent the earliest form of the bowl type 29 » (Curle, 1917, p. 144-145).