amphoras. (Don’t worry, even 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 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, painted
names, and numbers that tell each amphora’s story.
D.
Although scholars worked at Monte Testaccio beginning in the late 19th
century, it’s only within the past 30 years that they have embraced the role
amphoras can play in understanding the nature of the Roman imperial
economy. According to Remesal, the main challenge archaeologists and
economic historians face is the lack of “serial documentation,” that is,
documents for consecutive years that reflect a true chronology. This is what
makes Monte Testaccio a unique record of Roman commerce and provides a
vast amount of datable evidence in a clear and unambiguous sequence.
“There’s no other place where you can study economic history, food
production and distribution, and how the state controlled the transport of a
product,” Remesal says. “It’s really remarkable.”
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