makes documents easier to read or scan quickly. Standardized formats
reduce the number of words needed, and present the viewer with some-
thing like an ideogram of reference. Many tombstones, for example,
proclaim their subject before one word is read. So, too, do votive altars.
So does the standard form of a Roman letter. All this was perhaps
particularly useful in a world where many had relatively limited reading
skills, and also where some readers had to handle large numbers of
documents.
Like monumental inscriptions, the labels oninstrumentum domesticum
did not make many demands on a reader. A small recognition vocabulary
probably sufficed, and the general content must have been pretty predict-
able. They did, however, demand a knowledge of the particular format
and of the abbreviations used. Take the well-known Dressel 20 globular
amphorae from Baetica.
34
These were used for the most part for trans-
porting olive oil to distant locations, among them Rome—where their
fragments make up most of Monte Testaccio—the Rhineland camps, and
Roman Britain, where they are the most frequent type of transporter
amphorae. These amphorae have been much studied by epigraphists
because of the highly formulaic nature of the texts on them. There are
variations, but the standard set of texts includes a graffito on the base and
a stamp on the shoulder, both made before the amphora was fired, and
then up to four painted labels listing the weight of the amphora empty, its
weight full, the estate of origin, the names of those involved in checking it
and perhaps the names of the merchants taking it on. Each kind of label
appears in exactly the same position on the amphora. The precise inter-
pretation of these stamps and labels is debated mostly because they are
so abbreviated. What is not debated is that they show considerable
effort being made to monitor quantities and origins of each vessel,
or rather of its contents. Some see in this a highly evolved fiscal or
regulatory scheme organized by the state. But it seems more likely that
we are seeing attempts by a chain of individual and largely independent
economic agents to avoid fraud and guarantee the identity, provenance,
and quality of the contents. It is impossible to open a vessel once
sealed and pretty difficult to tell how much of the weight you buy
is ceramic and how much is contents. Between the olive orchards of
Andalusia and consumers on Hadrian’s Wall or on the Rhine there were
many stages of shipment, transhipment, and perhaps of purchase and
resale. The painted labels in the end offered the final purchasers some
sort of guarantee.
The Baetican amphorae are unusual in some respects, but versions of
this technology of labeling recur in other contexts. Olive oil does not last
- Peacock and Williams 1986, 136 40 for a short introduction; Bla ́zquez and
Remesal 1980 and 1983 for the production in general; Rodriguez Almeida 1993 for a
recent account of the epigraphy.
Literacy or Literacies in Rome? 57