260 MARK L. LAWALL
achieved through such exchanges. Hence, a hope of self-sufficiency as based on
some portion of livelihood being achieved without recourse to the market can
coexist with participation in market exchanges on a regular and rational basis.
An archaeological approach to this view of markets, therefore, requires
archaeological data related to supply, transactions, and demand, and an explo-
ration of how these three elements intersect. In terms of the supply to markets,
one can consider evidence for surplus production and storage facilities. Choice
might also be attested where imports are attested in areas where roughly the
same products are available locally (hence imports have been chosen as desir-
able). The processes of transactions can be explored foremost here through the
nature of packaging for commodities, but also through attestations of prices
and record-keeping, and the physical location of transactions. Of consider-
able importance in terms of the process of transactions is the level of risk and
uncertainty inherent to the process. Therefore, archaeological indications of
uncertainty (e.g., poorly standardized packaging, poor quality of information
from packaging, etc.) will encourage the search for hints of market mechanisms
that alleviate such problems. Studies of distributions of marketed goods among
households within a given site, an approach used with considerable success in
anthropological archaeology (Hirth 1998 ; Crook 2000 ), are less suited to the
archaeological record commonly encountered in classical archaeology where
associations between commodities and the specific household of ownership
are often difficult to establish. The localized re-use and multiple stages of dis-
card for transport amphoras (and other traded ceramics) tends to obscure any
differential access to these goods that may have once existed.Amphoras in Markets: Some General Observations
Taking into account the sorts of market imperfections and responses to those
problems in more modern settings, how did ancient markets operate? And
more narrowly to my interests, how can the study of transport amphoras con-
tribute to our understanding of this question? In seeking to establish a role for
amphora studies in the broader study of ancient economies, a central problem
needs to be addressed: amphoras were always only one part of a broader sys-
tem of exchange of which they are the most often and best-preserved element.
The contents held by the jar in the transaction(s) are rarely preserved, and
re-use and re-filling makes this even more problematic (Lawall 2011a; 2011b) ;
any ‘paperwork’ connected to the jar or cargo is rarely preserved (cf. Pébarthe
2000 ; Bresson 2000 : 141–9; W. V. Harris 2006 ; E. M. Harris 2013b); the verbal
information provided by the (trusted?) seller is, of course, long gone. What can
be documented, over the long term and over a vast and varied geography, is
the extent to which and when amphoras make concrete ‘contributions’ to the
process of transaction. No less important is to note when or how amphoras,