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The first report of a palaeomagnetic study of a Roman pottery kiln is presented. Individual bricks from the walls of the heating chamber have been sampled and measured in order to determine their palaeomagnetic directions. The measurements indicate that the innermost part of the structure was heated well above the Curie point of haematite, enabling the use of the palaeomagnetic declination and inclination, after the axial dipole correction and fitting to the Paris Z ( t ) curve, to infer the age of the last heating event.

Results from archaeomagnetic research on a Roman pottery kiln are presented. In a previous paper (Pares et al. 1992), a collection of samples from the kiln's heating chamber was studied and palaeodirection results were obtained. In the same paper, dating was performed on the basis of the secular variation reference curve of the inclination at Paris. In the present study, the palaeointensity was evaluated on the basis of the same collection of samples. The mean value obtained is 60.9pT. A comparison of this value with other available archaeointensity values, obtained from neighbouring territories, confirms the date estimated by Pares et al. ( 1992kthe middle of the 1st Century AD.

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