The Lowly Amphora (and ancient contact across the oceans)

The Mathisen Corollary ^ | Monday, February 6, 2012 | David Warner Mathisen

[SunkenCiv]

Professor Elizabeth Lyding Will (1924 - 2009...) was one of the world's leading authorities on amphoras, an ancient two-handled container that her research demonstrated to be vitally important for tracing ancient trade patterns and for opening windows on tremendous amounts of information about ancient life and commerce.

In a 2000 article entitled "The Roman Amphora: learning from storage jars," she discusses the diverse uses of "the lowly Roman amphora -- a two-handled clay jar used by the Canaanites, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans to ship goods," describing both its main usage for the transportation of liquids including wine, olive oil, and fish sauce, and its many other auxiliary uses, from funerary urn to acoustic enhancement device in theaters.

It makes fascinating reading, but the most intriguing aspect of the article, perhaps, comes in the final paragraph, in which Professor Lyding states that she has in her possession a fragment from one of the controversial amphoras found in Guanabara Bay outside of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and that she believes its characteristics may indicate a date of the third century AD.

This 1985 article from the New York Times explains that the bay is littered with shipwrecks, but that a particular submerged reef within the bay is known for the ancient jars that local fishermen have reported hauling up in their nets for years (hence the informal moniker, "Bay of Jars"). In the 1970s, the article reports, "a Brazilian diver brought up two complete jars with twin handles, tapering at the bottom, the kind that ancient Mediterranean peoples widely used for storage and are known as amphoras."

This piqued the interest of Florida author Robert Marx, who obtained permission to dive at the site in late 1982, and found the remains of over 200 broken amphoras as well as several complete amphoras.

[SunkenCiv]

[snip] Twice a year London's Sunday Times phones me to ask if I know anything more about the Rio Wreck. The highly publicized amphoras Robert Marx found in the ship are in fact similar in shape to jars produced in kilns at Kouass, on the west coast of Morocco. The Rio jars look to be late versions of those jars, perhaps datable to the third century A.D. I have a large piece of one of the Rio jars, but no labs I have consulted have any clay similar in composition. So the edges of the earth for Rome, beyond India and Scotland and eastern Europe, remain shrouded in mystery. [/snip, Elizabeth Lyding Will, "The Roman Amphora: Learning from Storage Jars", Archaeology Odyssey, January/February 2000]

[SunkenCiv]

Underwater Exploring Is Banned In Brazil
by Marlise Simons
Published: June 25, 1985
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/25/science/underwater-exploring-is-banned-in-brazil.html

[Covenantor]

bkmk

[SunkenCiv]

• Large Sunken Byzantine Ship Discovered in Black Sea off... Crimean Peninsula
• ...Why was the wine of the Negev so renowned in the Byzantine Empire...
• Byzantine Shipwrecks Shed New Light On Ancient Ship Building
• Underwater archaeology: Hunt for the ancient mariner
• NOAA vessel to explore undersea unknown

[SunkenCiv]

This particular find has intrigued me for thirty years or so, and I may wind up using it for the Digest ping on Saturday. :’)

[The_Victor]

There obviously must be a reason that escapes me, but I’ve always been puzzled by the purpose in the design of a liquid storage container that cannot stand upright on it own.

[Covenantor]

You don’t mess with the Brazilian navy..they beat the French in the famous Lobster War.

;>)

[SunkenCiv]

I think it had to do with the method by which it was made. Also, aboard ship, the jars would be stuck down into something, like straw, or more likely grain. When such ships got into duress, bailing probably wouldn't help, but the ships were much easier to abandon; I'd imagine a lot of crews survived such founderings, grabbing whatever was handy as a floatation device. There must be a good number of intact wrecks, as Ballard's team found in the Black Sea, down below the anoxia level.

• Romans In Brazil During The Second Third Century?
• Romans in Brazil During the Second or Third Century? [whoops]
• The Roman Head From Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca, Mexico: A Review Of The Evidence
• Ancient Romans In Texas?

[SunkenCiv]

;’)

[buffaloguy]

“There obviously must be a reason that escapes me, but I’ve always been puzzled by the purpose in the design of a liquid storage container that cannot stand upright on it own.”

The bottom of the jars fit into racks which had holes in them. Much more secure than a flat bottomed jar on a pitching ship.

[The_Victor]

The bottom of the jars fit into racks which had holes in them. Much more secure than a flat bottomed jar on a pitching ship.

Makes sense. And I guess the wooden racks don't usually survive underwater, which is why I've not seen one when archaeologists are excavating a bronze age shipwreck?

[The_Victor]

I saw the Discovery Channel show on Ballard's mapping/excavation of the Black sea wreck. But the wrecks always seem to have the jars in a jumble or maybe an aligned pile. I don't think I've seen anything about how they were placed in the hull of the boats.

Anyway, it's just one of those nagging questions that Discovery Channel never seems to answer.

[SunkenCiv]

See my answer above — the grain or straw would be long gone, leaving the jars in a jumble.

[TigersEye]

What amazes me about Roman amphoras is how big some of them are. 80 gallons or better. Yet the handles seem relatively small. The pottery must be stronger than I imagine to support that weight without the handles snapping off.

[buffaloguy]

Wood tends to go very rapidly underwater although there may have been a wreck or two where the racks still survived. It would have to be in an area in which the oxygen would been depleted.

[SunkenCiv]

I’m not sure if there’s been a correlation made between the sizes and their former contents, but there hasn’t been much study of that, it’s kind of new. The amphorae were also very often used but one time, IOW, they weren’t practicing sustainable clay technology. No wonder the Roman Empire only lasted from the conquest of Ostia (5th c BC) until the fall of Constantinople (AD 1453). ;’)

[Covenantor]

Well from a very distant memory of a Nat’l Geo article I do recall an instance of a wooden lattice frame that would have stabilized the amphorae cargo, critical to maintaining ship stability. Don’t need cargo rolling around in rough waters or a storm. Woodworms would have eaten the light wooden members. Wonder if a sand base could also have aided as ballast.

The other bit of info is that amphorae found in the wrecks were more or less standard plain bulk waterproof shipping containers. Liquids, grain might have been the main items stored but other dry goods such as scrolls, perhaps silk cloth could be shipped in these plain containers.

Wine and oil would be decanted into small decorated ones with or without bases. A quick search will show variations in shape and decoration. Somme very beautiful.

[The_Victor]

What amazes me about Roman amphoras is how big some of them are. 80 gallons or better. Yet the handles seem relatively small. The pottery must be stronger than I imagine to support that weight without the handles snapping off.

That brings up how the amphora were handled on the docks too. It won't stand upright by itself, so what did they do to secure them on the wharf?

It just seems cumbersome to me.

[Covenantor]

whoa...just caught that grain reference. Not with leaky bilges, it would end up a salt water mash.

[Covenantor]

Two handles at the top end with two slaves and a third slave at the tapered end. cheap, cheap, cheap.

;>)