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Dr
David
Williams
Dept of Archaeology
University of Southampton
Avenue Campus
Highfield
Southampton
SO17 1BJ
England
Tel: 080 593032
The colour varies quite substantially from pale brown to dark red-brown or greyish, and can be relatively soft to very hard. This suggests the possibility of various production sites, though may equally reflect varying firing conditions. A sherd from the Castello di Udine examined by Williams (1990) was in a hard, rather smooth and somewhat micaceous fabric. The visual similarity of some micaceous examples to Late Roman Amphora 3, has suggested a lower Maeander Valley provenance to some scholars. Other examples have less evident mica.
The example from Udine reveals frequent flecks of mica, nostly muscovite, and well-sorted subangular grains of monocrystalline quartz, together with monocrystalline limestone, or voids which often contained such material, some iron oxides and the odd grain of plagioclase felspar. This fabric is virtually identical to previous thin section work on Samos cistern type carried out by the writer on samples from Carminiello ai Mannesi in Naples (Williams, 1990).
i Agora M273
i Samos Cistern Type