Megarian Bowls and Terra Sigillata.

During his brief lifetime, the Macedonian king Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.E.) brought mainland Greece under his control and also conquered Persia and Egypt to form a "Hellenistic" kingdom composed of diverse peoples. Not surprisingly, the pottery from the period after Alexander the Great shows many diverse cultural influences. One type of pottery, however, became enormously popular in the Hellenistic period and, after 30 B.C.E., in Italy. From Italy its popularity spread to Roman Gaul and from there to Germany and Roman Britain. Its precursors were the "Megarian bowls" in Greece, tableware made in molds which seems to have had no particular connection with Megara, a Greek city on the Isthmus of Corinth. No later than the early third century, Athenian potters were producing crockery with relief ornaments which imitated the designs on metal vessels...