TRANSPORT AMPHORAS AND MARKET PRACTICES 261
taken on their own, serve more to confuse consumers than to facilitate transac-
tions. I begin with what I see as key positive and negative features of amphoras
in general terms as they might have operated within the tripartite model of
supply – transaction – demand formulated by Harvey et al. These generalized
features, however, ignore the more important historical perspective that can be
gained by tracing features of such archaeological data through time. Therefore,
the final section of this paper turns to the changing nature of amphora use in
transactions over time.
Amphoras as Containers in Transactions
Various metaphors can be used to understand amphora use in ancient trade.
Most commonly one thinks of the Coca-Cola bottle. The standardized size and
recognizable shape of the bottle bring necessary information to the consumer,
encouraging the purchase of a fixed quantity of ‘the real thing’. Amphoras,
however, differ from Coke bottles in key elements: they are far less standard-
ized and they have opaque walls preventing the fill level from being readily vis-
ible. They did not necessarily contain a specific product, nor were the contents
of a specific or reliable quality. To the degree that Coke bottles provide reliable
and consistent information, to that same degree or more so, amphoras confuse.
A second metaphor that could be used for the amphora is the modern ship-ping container. Primarily intended for maritime use and overland trucking
(Levinson 2008 ), these boxes are highly standardized yet depend on other doc-
umentation for indicating their contents and the qualities of those contents.
Amphoras, too, are largely intended for the movements of goods, particularly
on ships (but even overland, although they are not so carefully designed for
this function). Likewise, the amphora, like the shipping container, often pro-
vides little information itself as to the origins or nature of its contents. Like
the amphora, a shipping container has to be opened to verify its contents, even
to verify that the container was completely – not just partially – filled with
its stated contents. But unlike shipping containers, amphoras are not necessar-
ily standardized, so even the outer casing of the shipment – not just the inner
contents – will have varied in volume from amphora to amphora.
Thus, although clear differences arise between amphoras and such modernanalogues, the metaphors highlight key features of amphora use in ancient
trade. Amphoras could be counted easily, but the goods in question could
not be measured with great precision. In this sense, amphoras fit very well
into a concept at the heart of a recent book by Johnstone ( 2011 ). He argues
that Greek accounting, especially for individual interests, was largely based
on ‘containerization’ rather than measurement. In bulk shipments, then, the
counting-up of the amphoras must have been deemed acceptable and would
have been appropriate for calculating taxes or administering other controls. In