The edited volume is the result of the first international ROCT-conference (Roman Crafts and Trade Network) at the Catholic University Leuven on 7 and 8 May, 1999. The collected papers provide an overview of important recent contributions to the study of Italian sigillata and outline some approaches for future research. The contributions define methodological and chronological problems related to the import of Italian sigillata, and, at the same time, place Italian sigillata against a wider background, in order to evaluate its role in the changing early imperial ceramic assemblages, and discuss whether the trade in Italian sigillata could have been part of a wider pattern of exchange of goods, persons and ideas. The volume brings together a variety of archaeological and archaeometrical papers and covers the western regions of the empire, the Italian motherland and the Roman East, in trying to encompass the complex effects of Italian sigillata.