Amheida III. Roger S. Bagnall

      1. This house and its finds are published in Boozer et al. 2015.

      2. Ast and Davoli 2016.

3. CERAMIC FABRICS AND SHAPES

      Clementina Caputo

      The purpose of this section is to complement the papyrological study resulting from the textual and paleographical analysis of the ostraka of Amheida with information concerning the pottery supports on which they were written.¹

      The reuse of ceramic materials for purposes different from their original ones is very common, not only at Amheida but everywhere in Egypt and in the ancient world at large.² One of the main reuses of ceramic sherds in antiquity was in fact as the support material for the production of ostraka.³ At Amheida, pottery sherds were also abundantly used inside walls and especially in vaults covering the rooms of the town’s buildings, prolonging the “life” of ceramic fragments, which became in fact building material.⁴ Additionally, excavations at the site have attested to the reuse of pottery sherds that were already disposed of in larger dump contexts as fillings for the foundation layers of new buildings. In this case, the refuse already accumulated in a dump was laid as a fill for foundation trenches and building yards, and subsequently sealed off by the floors of the rooms of later buildings. In Area 2 at Amheida, ostraka are noticeably abundant in this kind of deposition.

      In the past, it has been rare for ostraka, widespread as they were, and not only in Greco-Roman Egypt,⁵ to receive much attention for any aspect other than their explicit written contents, and interest in the support, i.e., the type of sherd chosen to write on, has been particularly rare.⁶ Apart from a few exceptions, it was only in the 1990s that a certain interest in ostraka, both as texts and as artifacts associated with an archaeological context, started to develop.⁷

      Indeed, when this important category of finds is associated with specific geographic, temporal, and spatial contexts it can inform us about a wide range of activities taking place during all periods of occupation of an ancient site. Their contents add to the archaeological data new evidence for the social and economic interpretation of the settlement and the dwellings or public contexts in which they are found.

      In general, ostraka are often dated with far more accuracy than other archaeological evidence, thereby contributing to the dating of archaeological layers and their specific contexts.⁸ When dates can be ascribed to ostraka, they can also provide reference points for the general study of the ceramics, informing us of the timeframe during which particular shapes were in use. In turn, this information can provide dating to contexts in which ostraka without any internal chronological indications occur. Furthermore, knowledge of the different fabrics of ostraka and of the location of pottery workshops not only enables scholars to determine the place of manufacture of the potsherds but also the origins of certain texts and the commodities there mentioned.⁹

      This innovative approach to the study of the ceramic support, used on the ostraka from Amheida, allows us to utilize the morphology of potsherds to create a ceramological classification of the ostraka that can then be compared with the groupings resulting from the paleographical study of the texts. The investigation of the array of types these fragments belong to is fundamental in addressing issues of chronology and technical production, as well as the identification of complete vessels from which they derive. Finally, through the combination of vessel types, dating, and texts one can speculate on whether complete vessels of a particular type were still in use at the time when the text was written, or if fragments from the broken vessels were reused after a relatively long period of time, possibly even coming from a dump layer.¹⁰ In general, it must be stressed that the date of the creation of the support provides only a terminus post quem for the writing of the ostrakon, and that in principle centuries could pass between the two acts.

      3.1. METHODOLOGY

      The direct observation and study of the supports of the ostraka took place during the 2011 and 2013 seasons at the SCA magazine at Ismant (near the site of Kellis), and focused on all fragments found from 2004 to 2013.

      Each ostrakon made from pottery has been checked and compared with the remaining pieces comprising the corpus. Additionally, a ceramological study consisting of the classification of the supports according to the morphology, fabrics, and surface treatment was carried out for each ostrakon.

      The macroscopic study of all inscribed ceramic fragments followed the criteria below:

      • the composition of the clay;

      • the color of the surface and fractures;

      • the texture and appearance of the fabric;

      • the color, appearance, size, frequency, and quality of the inclusions;

      • the final processing and surface treatment (i.e., slip, decoration, etc.).

      The diagnostic fragments for which a secure vessel type has been recognized have been drawn and compared with similar shapes already present in the Amheida ceramic catalogue.¹¹ The combined data regarding fabric, shape, and function made it possible to establish a typological classification of the fragments analyzed.

      3.2. OSTRAKA AND CERAMICS

      The corpus of the Amheida ostraka consists of approximately 889 pieces. The Greek ostraka form the largest part of the corpus, with 813 specimens, while Hieratic and Demotic ostraka are less frequent, 13 and 25 examples respectively. 12 pictorial and 26 unidentified ostraka complete the corpus (Table 1).

      Table 1. Distribution of the ostraka by language.

      The contexts in which the ostraka were found during excavation belong mostly to dump layers and occupational deposits (75%). The dump layers are primarily foundation fills or dumped waste, but ostraka were also found on the surface or embedded in the walls as building material (“chinking sherds”) (Figs. 4–5).¹²

      In general, the range of datable ostraka coincides with that of other textual and numismatic evidence dating between the mid-first century and the end of the fourth century CE. The identified texts comprise accounts of different commodities, such as hay, oil, vinegar, wine, cotton, and bread, letters and delivery orders, lists of names, and writing exercises. The largest number of texts, with 344 examples or 36% of the total, are tags, especially well tags. Such small tags were used to label the contents of jars containing wine and other commodities and were placed in mud stoppers, as attested by three examples from the site where the ostrakon is still embedded in the stopper (O.Trim. 1.161, 200, and 204) (Fig. 6).¹³ Comparanda have also been found in 14 complete stoppers, still with their tags, from a Roman building at Kellis.¹⁴

      Figure 4. Body sherds embedded in a vault as building material (“chinking sherds”).

      Figure 5. Ostraka reused as chinking sherds in a dome covering a room.

      Figure 6. Tags still embedded in mud stopper.

      Among the items of information written on the well tag sherds were