Micro-regional Trade Networks of 4th -1st c. BC Cooking Ware from the Pontine region, southern Lazio (original) (raw)

2022, Rei Cretariae Romanae Fautores

The Pontine region is situated c. 60 km south of Rome. It consists of a large coastal plain, which is bounded by the Alban Hills and the Lepini and Ausoni Mountains to the north and east, and by the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west. The inner most part of this plain is formed by an infamous wetland, known as the Pontine marshes, which was reclaimed and opened with the construction of the Via Appia in the late 4 th c. BC (Fig. 1). Preliminary research conducted as part of the Pontine Region Project has indicated that 4 th-1 st centuries BC cooking ware from the central plain was obtained through local and supraregional trade networks (Borgers et al. 2017). Building upon this, two projects, which are carried out at the Universities of Uppsala and Vienna, examine cooking ware from surveys in three different micro-regions of the Pontine region, i.e., the coastal area, the central plain and Norba, situated in the foothills of the Lepini Mountains, respectively, with the aim to gain insight in the connectivity and intra-regional networks. Due to their abundance and homogeneous appearance, cooking ware holds important potential for studying production technology and origin, and for inferring trade between the communities that produced and used them. This study focuses on cooking jar (ollae), which occur on a wide range of 4 th-1 st c. BC sites. More specifically, two types have been selected for analysis: (1) olla type 2 with high collared rim, which is a predecessor of (2) Olla type 3a with almond-shaped rim (Olcese 2003; Fig. 2).