Roman harbours under scrutiny.

Roman harbours under scrutiny. DAVID David, in the BibleDavid,d. c.970 B.C., king of ancient Israel (c.1010–970 B.C.), successor of Saul. The Book of First Samuel introduces him as the youngest of eight sons who is anointed king by Samuel to replace Saul, who had been deemed a failure. PEACOCK & LUCY BLUE (ed.). Myos Hormos-Quseir al-Qadim,Roman and Islamic Ports on the Red Sea: Survey and Excavations1999-2003. x+180 pages, 177 illustrations. 2006. Oxford: Oxbow;1-84217203-4 hardback 40 [pounds sterling]. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] SIMON Simon,in the Bible.1 One of the Maccabees.2 or Simon Peter: see Peter, Saint.3 See Simon, Saint.4 Kinsman of Jesus.5 Leper of Bethany in whose house a woman anointed Jesus' feet. KEAY, MARTIN MILLETT, LIDIA LIDIA Local IDentification Insertion Automatically PAROLI PAROLI Parallel Optical Link (Infineon Technologies)& KRISTIAN STRUTT.Portus: An Archaeological Survey of the Port of Imperial Rome(Archaeological Monograph 15). xviii+360 pages, 235 illustrations. 2005.London: British School at Rome The British School at Rome was established in 1901 and granted a Royal Charter in 1912 as an educational institute culminating the study of awarded British scholars in the fields of archaeology, literature, music, and history of Rome and Italy of every period, and for the study of ; 0-90415247-2 paperback 49.50 [poundssterling]. Harbour archaeology has long been the poor relation of shipwreckarchaeology. It lacks the romantic aspect of wreck investigation and theprospect of spectacular underwater finds, and many important harboursites are now silted up and built over, or still in use as ports. Now,however, it is coming into its own, with ports being studied in widerperspective and specific sites intensively investigated. Here we havethe publication of two such sites in context, one on the farthest fringeof the Roman Empire, the other at its very centre. Myos Hormos This publication comes from the University of Southampton In the most recent RAE assessment (2001), it has the only engineering faculty in the country to receive the highest rating (5*) across all disciplines.[3] According to The Times Higher Education Supplement , adistinguished contributor to maritime archaeology in recent years. Itidentifies Quseir al-Qadim not with the minor port of Leukos Limen butwith Myos Hormos, as Peacock first argued in 1993 against Whitcomb,previous excavator ex��ca��va��torn.An instrument, such as a sharp spoon or curette, used in scraping out pathological tissue.excavator (eks´k at the site, who placed Myos Hormos further southunder modern Quseir. Along with Berenice, Myos Hormos was a major Egyptian port on theRed Sea, on the main route to India, and with relatively easy access tothe Nile. A merit of this book is the detailed study of its hinterland,putting the port properly in context (Chapter 2). Chapter 3, 'SiteSurvey', describes in detail the magnetometer survey whose resultscorrelate remarkably well with those from 'groundtruthing'trenches and selective excavations. Together these defined the curve ofthe inner harbour bay, a consolidated shoreline with a 'hard',and buildings behind. Where the geophysics results were less dear,sedimentological studies proved particularly valuable (Chapter 4): theyidentified, for example, the entrance channel from the sea to the innerbay, and showed how the accumulation of biodastic sand caused thenarrowing of the entrance channel from the early third century AD; thenwadi sediments put the inner harbour out of use, and the Islamic harbourwas merely a small bay or mersa, without built installations, extendingsome 200m in from the modern beach. Part II contains the accounts (of variable quality) of excavationsin the Roman and Islamic harbours and towns (Chapters 5 to 8). The Romanwaterfront consisted of amphorae set vertically in the silt and coveredwith packed earth, to forma 'hard' to facilitate access fromship to shore in a lagoonal environment; there were also stone-builtjetties. The amphorae, mainly Italian Dressel 2-4, provide good datingfor the construction (late Augustan/early first century AD), and thereis evidence of activity until the late second century. This means ofproviding basic harbour facilities on marshy marsh��y?adj. marsh��i��er, marsh��i��est1. Of, resembling, or characterized by a marsh or marshes; boggy.2. Growing in marshes. ground has been foundelsewhere already, e.g. at Longarina near Ostia Ostia(ŏs`tēə), ancient city of Italy, at the mouth of the Tiber. It was founded (4th cent. B.C.) as a protection for Rome, then developed (from the 1st cent. B.C.) as a Roman port, rivaling Puteoli. , reminding us that'primitive' does not necessarily mean 'early'. Romanactivity in buildings behind the foreshore foreshore:see beach. includes metalworking andpossibly ship-repairing, while Islamic activity also includesshipbuilding and a caravanserai for this important Mamluk tradingcentre. Excavations in the centre of the Roman town found one significantbuilding, perhaps a temple or synagogue, re-used, like other buildings,in the Mamluk period. Also revealed were Roman buildings of poor qualityin a 'low status area', though one contained a third-centurylevel with numerous fragments of ostraka and papyri in Greek, Latin andother (unidentified) languages; such documents, as well as many maritimeitems, were also found in sebakh deposits (rubbish dumps rich in organicremains), indicating foreign occupants or at least foreign contacts andidentifying the site as ancient Myos Hormos. Several buildings of theIslamic period were of 'high status', and one had evidence ofa high level of literacy; a paper document confirms that the site wasthen Quseir (AD 1300). The book concludes with a very good 'Discussion andConclusion' by the editors. Pharaonic material seems absent, butthere appears to be just sufficient evidence for a Ptolemaic presence(first century BC). Peacock and Blue are right to resist attempts toimpose town-planning models from Italy on a town on the fringes of theEmpire. Myos Hormos was a workaday place, buffeted by ferociousnortherly winds. Earthquakes may have played a part in its abandonmentin the mid-third century. Three of the five objectives the authors set themselves have beenmet: origins and development of the town; settlement layout; sedimentaryhistory and development of the harbour. The other two--the economy andthe nature of the ships--must await the publication of the finds in aplanned second volume. Publishing the fieldwork without delay is mostwelcome, but the drawback is that we cannot always fully judge theresults (e.g. the tantalizing tan��ta��lize?tr.v. tan��ta��lized, tan��ta��liz��ing, tan��ta��liz��esTo excite (another) by exposing something desirable while keeping it out of reach. references to nautical material; for theRoman rigging remains see now J. Whitewright in IJNA IJNA International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 36.2 [2007]:28292). We look forward to this next volume, with, we hope, bettercopy-editing and an index. Portus Portus is the publication of non-intrusive surveys by the BritishSchool at Rome, the Ostia Soprintendenza and the Universities ofSouthampton, Durham and Cambridge. The Preface, by the SoprintendenteAnna Gallina Zevi, makes clear the warm collaborative spirit, and it isgood to know that collaboration will continue. She rightly stresses thedifference between work at Ostia (a protected site since the earlynineteenth century) and Portus: much of the latter is still privatelyowned, and this becomes clear, if with understandable discretion, inthis book. Chapters 2 and 3 present the port area of Ostia, introduce Portus,its geomorphological ge��o��mor��phol��o��gy?n.The study of the evolution and configuration of landforms.geo��mor context and history, and summarise previous work atthe site, helpfully illustrated with plans and drawings from 1567 to1965: clearly much information was lost to Fiumicino airport. In Chapter4 Keay, Millett and Strutt summarise their strategy: 'to applycomplementary methods of survey across as much as possible of the site... to integrate the results in order to gain the maximum information,allowing for the constraints imposed by time, funds and limitations onaccess ... The strategy had to be flexible because of the differenttypes of land-use found ...' About 178ha were subjected totopographic, geophysical and fieldwalking surveys. Civil aviationregulations excluded air photography but chance photographs of the Tiberarea taken by a Guardia di Finanza This article or section needs copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone and/or spelling.You can assist by [ editing it] now. pilot were a great bonus. Chapter 5 presents clearly the impressive results of the survey;data and interpretative drawings are shown on facing pages, enabling thereader to judge the two together, and not feel swamped by the detail.Sadly 'survey not allowed' and 'area damaged by modernlandscaping' appear for various important places around theharbours. To the east the survey, supplemented by the dramatic obliqueair photographs, was much more productive, giving us an entirely newpicture of the area between the Trajanic harbour and the Tiber. Therefollows a good analysis of the spatial patterning of the surface findswith maps showing the location of diagnostic material. In Chapter 6, the finds' catalogue, justified importance isattributed to the location of dated brick-stamps as indicators ofbuilding activity at different periods, and suggesting a 'statepattern' in the provision of building materials; the concentrationsof amphorae are noted as indicators of the location of warehouses.Conclusions from surface material are drawn cautiously and mainly fromthe amphorae, which formed over half the material. There is a high levelof imports--a different picture from Ostia--and amphorae and otherceramics are probably the residue of material transshipped from vesselsand stored at Portus. The chapter concludes with brief period summaries;I am intrigued by a remark, not explained, that 'The decline [in AD500-700] in the presence of pottery may be due not so much to a declinein the volume of exchange, as to changes in systems of unloading andstorage' (p. 238). Chapter 7 provides a summary of recent work at Portus by members ofthe Ostia Soprintendenza, disproving a northern entrance to the Claudianharbour (compare the team geologist's text, Chapter 2) anddescribing excavations in the Darsena and the Basilica Portuense. Phasesof construction in the Darsena go back to AD 67 (see below); there aregood photographs of the mooring quays, but none of the 'launchingramps' mentioned on p. 250. The Darsena remains difficult tounderstand since it has suffered much since the 1930s. The last two chapters (8-9) are the core of the book. Keay andMillett evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the material, bringtogether their results and discuss them in the context of all earlierwork at the site, much of it incompletely published and contradictory.They emphasise that the main strength of their work lies in its scaleand the integration of complementary surveys, with new evidence forareas across the whole site and clear evidence for the plans of hithertounknown buildings or, at least, new insights into old evidence. But theyadmit that without new excavation, dating the structures will remaindifficult; they rightly warn against the temptation to relate undated un��dat��ed?adj.1. Not marked with or showing a date: an undated letter; an undated portrait.2. orpoorly dated structures to historically attested phases of buildingwork, when in fact at Portus there was probably continuous building andrebuilding. They do, however, show that sequences can be establishedfrom superimposed features or through horizontal stratigraphy and frompatterns of distribution of dated surface material from thefieldwalking. It is now clear that the Claudian harbour entrance was to the west,and not through a putative 'natural inlet' to the north. Keayand Millett's most important conclusion, however, concerns theextent of the Claudian harbour: it was much greater than previouslythought, and involved more than just the outer harbour. With regard to apre-Trajanic circular structure in the Palazzo Imperiale area, Keay andMillett make the attractive suggestion that it may have been a lantern,on an alignment with the lighthouse, perpendicular to that of thestructures in the Darsena area. For the canals, attested epigraphicallyin the plural for the Claudian period, the authors propose a northern(relief) canal and the Fossa fossa/fos��sa/ (fos��ah) pl. fos��sae ? [L.] a trench or channel; in anatomy, a hollow or depressed area.acetabular fossa? a nonarticular area in the floor of the acetabulum. Traiana. For the Darsena they suggest--in aradical but convincing re-interpretation involving a brick-stamp of AD67 built into the quay edge of the Darsena's first phase, as wellas other elements--that it and surrounding canals, central to theTrajanic layout, were all already part of the Claudian scheme. TheDarsena served as inner basin to the main outer basin, just asTrajan's hexagon was to do later. 'Extensive as Trajanic developments were, they did notfundamentally alter the pre-existing configuration of the outer basin,inner basin and transshipment TransshipmentThe passing goods from one ocean vessel to another. facilities. Instead, Trajan'sarchitects added to and enhanced the earlier port, not only creating anew hexagonal basin to provide additional mooring and greaterwarehousing capacity than before, bur also turning the axis of the the diameter of the sphere which is perpendicular to the plane of the circle.See also: Axis sitethrough 90[degrees] and connecting it more directly with Rome via a newcanal that permitted easier transshipment' (p. 281). The survey hasadded evidence about the buildings around the hexagon (and confirmedLanciani's proposal of a temple opposite the harbour entrance), butnothing about the hexagon basin and quays themselves, through lack ofaccess for survey; this brings us to the question put by Rickman adecade ago--why the hexagonal shape? The remarkable new feature was the hexagonal basin. There areparallels in ancient harbour architecture for the inland basin, bur notfor its size or shape. The shape does not seem to have been primarilydictated by pre-existing structures, nor does it appear to facilitateorganisation of wharfing operations: rather the reverse, as Rickman hasobjected. This is acknowledged: it 'created complicated ... links,... which must have necessitated ships being towed or winched bycapstans, from one area to another.' Keay and Millett acutelyobserve that we nowadays appreciate the hexagonal shape from plans andair views, not at ground level, as would those who entered in antiquity.The impact would have been created by a series of porticoes, thecolossal statue of Trajan and the temple in its precinct directlyopposite: a 'maritime facade', to use the fashionable phrase.The shape would also have provided a high ratio of quayside quay��side?n.The area adjacent to a quay or wharf or a system of quays, especially in a port city.quaysidequay n → Kai mto basinarea and practical advantages for controlling the different functions ofeach side. The other main Trajanic addition, the wide canal to theTiber, became the main shipping route. The enormous increase inwarehouse space, indicating state control of transport (as opposed toentrepreneurial activity at Ostia) and the crucial role of long-termstorage of foodstuffs foodstuffsnpl → comestibles mplfoodstuffsnpl → denr��es fpl alimentairesfoodstuffsfood npl → are emphasised. In the excellent final chapter Keay and Millett reassess,inevitably with some repetition, their understanding of Portus: theimportance of the urban component, the significance of its planning andthe purpose of the whole complex. They stress that the Claudian harbourshould not be studied by reading back from the Trajanic: its locationwas determined by the two canals whose purpose would have been, firstflood-relief, and only later an improved route for barges; but it wouldsoon have become clear that the second purpose enabled barges to avoidthe Tiber mouth. The authors then argue convincingly that the outerharbour and Darsena complex developed over some thirty years fromClaudius to the Flavians. Transshipment to barges now took place in thenew harbour rather than in the Tiber mouth--hence its huge size--or inthe (relatively small) Darsena. Storage in warehouses facilitated theflow of goods up the Tiber, avoiding congestion The condition of a network when there is not enough bandwidth to support the current traffic load. congestion - When the offered load of a data communication path exceeds the capacity. . Few warehouses ofClaudian date have been identified, but they have twice the area ofthose at Ostia; Ostia, however, was not replaced, nor (at this stage)was Puteoli. Emphasising the regular plan of the harbour, influenced byconsideration of the approaches by land and sea, and the personalinterest of Claudius and Nero, Keay and Millett argue that this was to'make an important statement about the imperial power' at this'monumental gateway to Rome from the empire at large.' Despite its weight, this book is reader-friendly. The pairedfull-page illustrations and interpretations are an inspired idea, allthe evidence is made available, and the contributions of Italiancolleagues are valuable. Epigraphic ep��i��graph?n.1. An inscription, as on a statue or building.2. A motto or quotation, as at the beginning of a literary composition, setting forth a theme. , numismatic nu��mis��mat��ic?adj.1. Of or relating to coins or currency.2. Of or relating to numismatics.[French numismatique, from Late Latin numisma, numismat-, and historical sources,as well as the index, make the book handy for reference. It is anopulent production (Italian financial support is acknowledged), wellwritten and produced, worthy of a splendid achievement: the applicationof modern landscape archaeology, fully conscious of its limitations, toa complex and centrally important site, a site which has suffered muchfrom encroachment and which will remain under threat from development. David Blackman, Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, IoannouCentre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles; Oxford OX1 3LU,UK (Email: david.blackman@classics.ox.ac.uk)