TRANSPORT AMPHORAS AND MARKET PRACTICES 269
Cargoes themselves from shipwrecks attest to at least a few hundred jarsfrom one local region (although not necessarily all from one workshop) being
loaded on board initially as seen at the Pabuç Burnu wreck (Greene et al.
2008 ) or the Tektaş Burnu wreck (Carlson 2003 ). By the late fifth century,
cargoes of amphoras numbering in the thousands are attested (Hadjidakis
1996 ). After a few stops, however, especially once such ships cleared the Aegean
basin, smaller batches often replaced what was offloaded at successive stopping
points. One can compare, for example, the more diverse cargo of the Pointe
Lequin Ia wreck (Long et al. 1992 ) or the Gela I wreck (Panvini 2001 ), each
with diverse Aegean cargoes against the La Love, Bon-Porté, or Dattier wrecks
with dominant cargoes of Etruscan or Massaliote amphoras (Pomey and Long
1992 ). Buyers and sellers would often be operating with jars of quite different
sizes, contents of uncertain quality, and jars potentially in a state of reuse and
reshipment.
At best some sort of complementary ‘paperwork’, perhaps hinted at bythe few lead letters (E. M. Harris 2013b: 113–23) and removable lead labels
(Lequément 1975 ; Rotroff 2011 ) that survive, might have identified the origins
and qualities of the goods in the jars (see also Bresson 2000 : 141–3). There is
growing consensus as to the high degree of information exchange and buyer/
seller knowledge in the Archaic fineware trade (Paleothodoros 2007 ; Osborne
2007 goes further to argue that the evidence suggests mutual knowledge far
beyond simply the market in finewares), a transaction system in which what
you can see is exactly what you get. Archaic amphora transactions were much
more subject to uncertainty.
The aggregate picture of local demand can be reconstructed on the basis ofamphora finds on land at specific sites. For the late sixth through fifth centu-
ries, amphora types of the local region dominate amphora assemblages within
the Aegean basin, regardless of specific location (e.g., Lawall 2006 : 253; Greene
et al. 2008 : 688–93). Thus while the wealthiest minority or the community
coffers might have been willing and able to attract more distant imports, the
significant portion of transactions involved the local produce. Athens offers a
striking exception to this pattern especially from the earliest decades of the
fifth century, but even in the late sixth century there is never a dominance
of local amphoras in Athenian deposits. After ca. 480 BCE there is no known
Attic local transport amphora, but surely the lack of local production was
a response to a ready supply of diverse imported jars (Lawall 1995 ; 2011e).
Farther afield in the Pontic region and the Levant, the Ionian cities, many of
which are attested as being active in long distance trade and settlement, pro-
vide the bulk of the imported amphoras (Monakhov 1999 ; there is no such
synthesis for the Levant). In some cases, Greek consumers have been postulated
for these imports; in other cases, local indigenous use, at least of the jars if not