Er Rasm Garum Installation
About
Two kilometers from Ashkelon's walls, a first-century estate combined vineyards with a small garum operation, plastered vats and fish pools tucked onto a sandstone ridge safely downwind of the city. It's one of the only identified fish-sauce factories found anywhere in the eastern Mediterranean, proof that Rome's fermented-fish habit reached deep into provincial Judaea. Excavators noted the smell alone explained why it sat so far from town. The estate also grew wine, working as an integrated farm rather than a dedicated cannery.
What happened here
Rows of stone vats sunk into the ground beside the sea, and the smell reaches a long way inland. Small fish and the guts of larger ones are layered with salt and left in the sun for weeks; the liquid that separates off is drawn away as fish sauce and the residue is sold cheaply as paste. Grades run from a luxury sauce that costs more than good wine down to the version bought by everyone else. Tunny is netted in season from lookout towers on the headland, and the fishing, salting, potting and shipping all happen within a few hundred metres. Amphorae are stamped with the maker's name. Towns built on this are rich, and they are built downwind of themselves.
Sources
- Times of Israel, 'Factory for Romans' favorite funky fish sauce discovered near Ashkelon' (2019)
- academia.edu, 'The Good Life: Evidence for the Production of Wine and Garum in an Early Roman Estate...South of Ashkelon'
Nearby
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