Arva Amphora Kilns
About
Three kilns dedicated to firing Dressel 20 olive-oil amphorae turned up beside the Roman river town of Arva during a 1991 excavation near its bathhouse. Barges loaded these globular jars straight onto the Guadalquivir for the run down to Hispalis and out to Ostia and the rest of the empire. One of the kilns dates squarely to the Flavian-Trajanic years, meaning it was firing amphorae right around 117 CE. Stamped handles from the workshop have surfaced at find-spots strung along the river valley.
What happened here
The workshop runs as a production line. Clay is dug locally, weathered over winter, kneaded and thrown, or pressed into moulds for the decorated wares. Vessels are dried under cover, stamped with the potter's name, stacked in the kiln around a central flue and fired for days with the temperature judged by eye and by test pieces pulled from a port in the side. A big firing holds tens of thousands of pots and a bad one loses the lot. Wasters are dumped in heaps beside the works. Some workshops export across half the empire and their stamps turn up thousands of miles away. Fuel is the limit on everything, so kilns sit near woodland and move when it runs out.
Sources
Nearby
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Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →