Origins and Distribution of Hellenistic and Late Republican Transport Amphorae in the Dalmatian Region and its Implications for Adriatic Trade and Economy

Abstract

The presence of Hellenistic and Late Republican transport amphorae at numerous sites along the Adriatic and within shipwrecks off the coast indicates that intense trade and/or exchange in commodities such as olive oil and wine took place in this region from the fourth until the first century BC. The details of this commercial activity are nevertheless unclear in terms of the sources, destinations, and routes via which transport containers and their contents were circulated. The present study brings compositional data to bear on this topic by analysing petrographically and geochemically 248 amphorae sherds from 15 sites along the Dalmatian coast of present-day Croatia, including production sites, places of consumption, and shipwrecks. This revealed the existence of several larger amphora workshops whose amphorae were used to export goods to Dalmatia during the fourth and third centuries BC. They were involved in direct trade or through intermediaries in the redistribution centres. In the second and first centuries BC, only one workshop supplied amphorae in the region, which is probably the Dalmatian town of Issa. Aspects of the regional and inter-regional distribution and redistribution of amphorae from these workshops have been reconstructed, as well as changes within the trading system over time.