Multilevel Full Mock Test 1

B.
 
Monte Testaccio stands near the Tiber River in what was ancient Rome’s commercial 
district. Many types of imported foodstuffs, including oil, were brought into the city and 
then stored for later distribution in the large warehouses that lined the river. So, 
professor, just how many amphoras are there?” I ask José Remesal of the University of 
Barcelona, co-directo
r of the Monte Testaccio excavations. It’s the same question that 
must occur to everyone who visits the site when they realize that the crunching sounds 
their footfalls make are not from walking on fallen leaves, but on pieces of amphoras. 
(Don’t worry, ev
en the small pieces are very sturdy.) Remesal replies in his deep 
baritone, “Something like 25 million complete ones. Of course, it’s difficult to be exact,” 
he adds with a typical Mediterranean shrug. I, for one, find it hard to believe that the 
whole mountain is made of amphoras without any soil or rubble. Seeing the incredulous 
look on my face as I peer down into a 10-foot-
deep trench, Remesal says, “Yes, it’s really 

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page 16 
only amphoras.” I can’t imagine another site in the world where archaeologists find so 
much
—
about a ton of pottery every day. On most Mediterranean excavations, pottery 
washing is an activity reserved for blisteringly hot afternoons when digging is impossible. 
Here, it is the only activity for most of Remesal’s team, an international group of
specialists and students from Spain and the United States. During each year’s two
-week 
field season, they wash and sort thousands of amphoras handles, bodies, shoulders, 
necks, and tops, counting and cataloguing, and always looking for stamped names, 
pain
ted names, and numbers that tell each amphora’s story.