Terra sigillata or samian wares are the classic fine wares of the early Roman period, familiar to any visitor to a museum or excavation with finds of this period. Their study has a long and brilliant history, and has traditionally overshadowed that of more humble wares.

The roots of the industry go back to the mid-first cent. BC in Italy. Building on the foundations of a pre-existing black-slipped ware industry, glossy red-slipped wares were produced at Arezzo, in northern Tuscany, by c. 40 BC. The industry expanded, and factories producing Italian-type sigillata were founded at other centres in Italy, such as Pisa, and also in southern France and northern Spain.

• The earliest sigillata wares in northern Europe, including the pre-conquest imports to Britain, are from the Italian workshops or their offshoots, but the most important sources of samian for the area during the first-third cent. AD are, successively, the factories of South, Central and Eastern Gaul.
• Small workshops operated in Britain during the second century AD, firstly at Pulborough (Sussex) and later at Colchester (Essex).