The central subjects of this dissertation are wheel thrown pottery and settlements from the Roman period in the southern part of the Netherlands from the first three centuries of the Christian... Show moreThe central subjects of this dissertation are wheel thrown pottery and settlements from the Roman period in the southern part of the Netherlands from the first three centuries of the Christian era. Research shows that in most of the modern publications on pottery insufficient attention is devoted to describing the form of the pottery and that there is no common, systematic way of quantifying the pottery. In several settlements the horizontal-stratigraphical analysis has been employed, the core of which are the Roman measurements used and the spatial relations between elements in the settlements. Thus, the consecutive stages of development of the settlements (villas and temples) could, to a large extent, be established. The reorganisation from a military district on the Lower Rhine into the province of Germania inferior, the grant of municipal status and the imperial name to Nijmegen, the involvement of the Roman army in the construction of both public buildings in Nijmegen and villas and temples in the Batavian countryside, agrarian changes, as well as the substitution of hand-made pottery by wheel thrown pottery, are signs of an important transformation of the civitas Batavorum during a period of less than a generation (between 85 and 122 AD). Show less