Ancient Literacies

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

long, even sealed, and consumers want it fresh, so there are no dates on


Dressel 20 amphorae. Wine is different. Consular years were occasionally


painted on containers used for fine wine that might be laid down. The


prefiring stamps and graffiti on amphorae offered different kinds of guar-


antee. Many related to the management of the production processes by


which these vessels were made. The study of ceramic production is


making clearer and clearer how often potters working individually came


together to share facilities like kilns.^35 Control marks on brick, tiles, and


amphorae were often designed to enable different producers to keep


separate products that were visually hard to distinguish. This reflects an


increasing tendency to standardize size and appearance of products—to


the extent that when petrographic analysis was first employed on wine


amphorae it revealed completely unsuspected diversities of provenance


among vessels classified typologically as identical. None of this uniformity


was the product of mechanized or automated processes, and there can


have been few practical advantages, the main exception being in helping


stack and store large consignments. The development of Italian wine


amphora types in the Western empire shows a concern by Italian produc-
ers to duplicate the physical appearance of the vessels in which more


prestigious Greek wines—like those of Cos—were imported, followed by


a concern by provincial producers to replicate styles that had become


associated with central Italian production. I emphasize two points. First,


amphora makers tried increasingly hard to conform on canonical types.


Second, writing was a vital means of allowing distinction among these


products, and a guarantee of the quantities and qualities that this uni-


formity claimed.


All this is so natural to us—living in a world of standardized sizes and


obsessive commodity labeling—that it takes an effort to step back and see


how remarkable and unusual it was in antiquity. Much exchange took


place directly between maker and consumer, or through a single inter-


mediary, even in classical times. The history of labels on container am-


phorae can easily be traced back to the Bronze Age. But before the


Hellenistic period they rarely did more than specify contents or owner-


ship. The more complex systems seem to have originated chronologically


in the late third or early second centuryB.C.E.


It istempting toconnect this with somecontemporaneous developments


in the Mediterranean economy. These might include the appearance of


thevilla; the creation ofmacella—retail food markets in Rome and its


colonies; the development of the Roman law of agency that made it possible


to regulate institores; the boom of public contracts noted by Polybius,


exemplified in censorial building projects and by the provisioning of
Roman armies overseas; and by the apparent mushrooming in the trade of



  1. Pucci 1981, Fu ̈lle 1997 on Arretine, Peacock 1982, 114 28 in general.


58 Situating Literacies

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