[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]

[Covenantor]

bkmk

[Robert A Cook PE]

Yeah, yeah.

I know the standard spiel about how the narrow tip supposedly allows them to be packed in tighter in the Roman vessel of the time.

Don’t buy it. No way that is as efficient overall to load, lift, carry, or stow than a flat-bottom (or better yet, a flat-side) container. So, if it fits better in a rounded hull vessel, how does it fit in a granary or warehouse? Or on the dock, the cart, or the barge?

[Talisker]

A flatter bigger bottom would mean more ways to break and lose the liquid contents when setting it down too hard or onto an uneven surface. Pointed bottom can be reinforced with more clay, maybe with added straw for strength, and makes sure through its very design that no one can just leave it sitting somewhere without first having to put it into some kind of protective rack. So the design is protective of the liquid contents both physically and psychologically.

[ExCTCitizen]

It is said that Phoenicians discovered America, so who knows. I mean, the Aztecs said white skinned people from the east are GODS.

[Rockpile]

Well I’ll be darned. Have got Marx’s Shipwrecks in the Americas sitting on the table right next to me and was re-reading a bit last night.

IIRC, Marx also said about the amphorae finds that some of them would be brought up in nets and that fishermen would destroy them to prevent snagging them again.

Have not some building ruins included round holes in shelves or worktops where the containers could be placed? Kind of like a big cup holder. Convenient in a home or storefront, tavern or anywhere you needed to dip out a cupful at a time and it wouldn’t be knocked over.

Would seem like the stevedores and warehousemen or anybody else handling these things would grab the pointed end with one hand and handle with the other and heave them onto a shoulder.