Hispania and the Roman Mediterranean AD 100–700: Ceramics and Trade (review)

In this ambitious book Paul Reynolds analyzes the supply and exchange of major liquid commodities (olive oil, fish sauce, and wine) through the Mediterranean from the Flavian period until some time in the seventh century. His evidence is primarily the distribution patterns of various amphora types and the location and history of the production centers of both ceramics and commodities. The book is divided into four chapters that (1) set the stage by looking at the growth of oil and garum production in Hispania and Tunisia and of wine production for regional markets in the west and for long distance trade from the Black Sea and the Aegean; (2) trace the distribution within the Spanish peninsula of African Red Slip ware (Tunisia), Late Roman C (shipped from the ports near Pergamum), and various regional Spanish and south Gallic fine wares between the Severan period and the time of Justinian; (3) analyze the export of Spanish oil and fish sauce chronologically from the third through the fifth century in the context of competing sources of supply; and (4) compare and contrast the import patterns of Byzantine and Vandal sites in Spain and the Italian peninsula as long-distance trade became regional or ceased altogether in the later sixth and seventh century. The evidence is presented in numerous tables setting out the proportions of oil, wine, and fish imports from provincial regions (North Africa, Spain, the Aegean) from dated pottery dumps in Marseilles, Rome, Butrint, and Beirut as well as the eastern coast of Spain and Britain, together with an assessment of the chronology of numerous kiln sites and of villas that produced the commodities in Hispania.

The documentation is prodigious: 36 pages of maps and profiles, 36 pages of tables, 78 pages of notes to the text, and a 38-page bibliography, not to mention several indices; the text itself is only 156 pages. Anyone who intends to use the book should spend some time analyzing the tables, which, as usual, lie at the heart of Reynolds’ analysis. Some are based on his own partly unpublished work (Beirut: Tables 4a, 4b, 9a, 9b, 15, 24; Benalúa: 22; Durres: 3a, 3b; Butrint: 25a, 25b); the remainder have been calculated from publications by other archaeologists. It is striking that the elements of such tables are no longer individual amphora or fineware types (as they have been since quantified studies began in the 1970s) but production centers or provinces. How one gets from the older to the newer sort of table is illustrated in Table 22, in which we see that the 12 Baetican amphora fragments in fact belong to 6 types and the 22.6 percent eastern Mediterranean amphoras comprise 8 types. This kind of amalgamation, impossible until enough sources were identified, brings quantified studies to a point where historians can begin to use them. Furthermore, for the first and early second centuries (which is why the book had to begin ca.100) it is also possible, because of the large numbers of dipinti preserved at Pompeii and Ostia and the detailed studies of Clementina Panella in the Ostia reports, to build tables around liquid commodities, for example,, the Meta Sudans deposit of 64–68 CE had 11 percent African wine amphoras, 0.4 percent African oil, 0.6 percent African garum, and 2.3 percent unclassified (Table 1a, 1b, 6a, 11, and 17a). In later centuries, when such dipinti have not been reported, Reynolds is able to continue discussing commodities using a combination of typological argument and knowledge of regional products based on the earlier dipinti. (This is why the evidence for the production of oil, wine, and fish sauce in the Mediterranean is discussed in the first chapter.)

The book lives up to its title. Discussions of small inland sites in Spain and the regional variations in Spanish fine wares, liquid commodities, and cooking pots derived from coastal sites are interpolated between equally detailed discussions of...