Roman Amphorae: a digital resource
University of Southampton, 2005. (updated 2014) https://doi.org/10.5284/1028192. How to cite using this DOI
Data copyright © University of Southampton unless otherwise stated
This work is licensed under the ADS Terms of Use and Access.
Primary contact
Dr
David
Williams
Dept of Archaeology
University of Southampton
Avenue Campus
Highfield
Southampton
SO17 1BJ
England
Tel: 080 593032
Resource identifiers
- ADS Collection: 463
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1028192
- How to cite using this DOI
Agora F65-66 fabric
Fabric Visual Characteristics
An early version of the LR3 fabric. Very distinctive hard, thin-walled micaceous fabric, normally a lightish buff to grey or reddish-brown in colour.
Fabric Petrological Characteristics
Thin sectioning shows abundant flakes of muscovite and biotite mica, together with grains of quartz, fragments of metamorphic quartzite and rarer quartz-muscovite-schist. Heavy mineral separation on samples of Late Roman 3 amphora from Tintagel produced a practically monomineralic suite of dahllite grains, while a sample from Carthage contained garnet and kyanite (Williams, 1982). Dahllite normally occurs as a secondary mineral in phosphorite, though here the euhedral form and large grain size suggest an igneous source. Taken together, the petrological results suggest an origin in an area of igneous and metamorphic rocks. This would support the idea of an origin in western Asia Minor (Hayes, 1976: 117) rather than Byzantium (Thomas, 1976: 246) or Egypt (Grace: 1961, Fig. 67). The area around Byzantium is composed mainly of Devonian rocks, while the north of Egypt is predominantly made up of sedimentary rocks (assuming a source fairly close to the coast).
Amphora made from this fabric
i Agora F65-66
