The Excavation at Tocra 1974: additional observations in the light of the Berenice excavations

Abstract

It is the purpose of this article to provide a convenient summary of the full report of the Tocra kiln site excavation (appearing in Libya Antiqua: Riley, in press 2) to incorporate fresh information which has now become available as a result of the Berenice excavations (Lloyd 1977), and to present, in summary, a revised format for the quantified figures.A considerable quantity of coarse pottery (over 12,000 sherds, weighing nearly 700 kg) was excavated in the course of the limited two week excavation. The range of forms was very similar to that occurring in stratified deposits at Berenice dating from the late second to the mid third centuries A.D. As a detailed publication of this Berenice material is soon to appear (Riley, in press 1), the pottery from Tocra is here reproduced according to the Berenice typology, in order to facilitate the standardisation of coarse pottery classification between the two sites, and within Cyrenaica in general.The pottery from the various tip levels is consistent and, as fine wares datable to the first half of the third century A.D. were present in both the lowest and uppermost tip levels, the whole excavation appears to represent one period (see Riley 1976). For this reason, while the quantified results of the individual layers are presented in full in the final report, an amalgamation of these results for the whole excavation is here presented in the format subsequently devised for Berenice and Carthage (see Humphrey 1976, 125–156).