Las Delicias Amphora Kilns
About
Three kilns on a bend of the Genil river turned out little besides Dressel 20 olive-oil amphorae for over two centuries, backed by an attached villa and refuse dumps covering some four thousand square meters. Rare potters' stamps from this workshop have been traced to find-spots scattered along the Genil and Guadalquivir. Production ran continuously from the Julio-Claudian period into the third century CE, squarely bracketing 117 CE.
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 →