Labelling Building B: storage, processing or naval depot?
The excavation of a Roman coastal complex at San Pawl il-Baħar has reached publication stage. Building B is a rectangular room, 24 m by 9 m, with a beaten-earth floor into which seven dolia defossa - sunken storage jars about 1.6 m deep - were set in a single row. The floor deposit produced roughly 3,200 amphora sherds; the identifiable pieces belong to Baetican olive-oil amphorae (Dressel 20) and North African fish-sauce containers (Africana II). One painted dipinto on a dolium reads, in part, “L. Iuli…”. There is no kiln, no press bed, no millstones and no hearth large enough for industrial processing. The sherds have been counted by fabric only, not by rim-to-base ratios, and no residue or soil analysis has been commissioned. The site director favours the label “naval stores” because a fragment of a bronze fitting was found nearby. The publication committee meets in three weeks; the panel is split between “naval stores”, “fish-processing plant” and “commercial warehouse”.
1. Which label is best supported by the evidence as presented, and what is wrong with the two rival labels? Argue as a committee member moving a recommendation.
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Criterion first. The question is not which label is most interesting but which claim would survive peer review with the evidence actually published. A label is a hypothesis, and hypotheses must be proportionate to evidence.
- Processing is the weakest option. Oil and fish sauce are made with press beds, vats, channels, weights and a water supply, and these leave durable traces (opus signinum linings, press stones, settling tanks). None was found. Here the absence is meaningful precisely because such installations are archaeologically visible.
- “Fish-processing plant” is actively contradicted. Africana II containers are the transport vessels in which fish sauce arrived; you do not make the product in the jar you import it in. Their presence points to incoming goods.
- “Naval stores” rests on one bronze fitting - an argument from a unique, ambiguous object. Fittings occur on doors, furniture, carts and ships alike. It should be published as a find, not promoted to a building label.
- “Commercial warehouse” is consistent but underdetermined. Mixed origins (Baetica, Africa) show goods entering a network. Seven dolia of roughly 800–1,200 litres each imply a capacity of some 6,000–8,000 litres, well beyond household need, which supports surplus storage. But estate storage for consumption cannot yet be separated from storage for redistribution.
Recommendation: “Storage building (horreum); function and ownership uncertain”, with the bronze fitting listed as unstratified or isolated. Declared uncertainty is stronger than invented certainty.
2. What single further analysis would most change the picture, and what result would overturn your recommendation?
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Best single move: proper quantification of the amphora assemblage. Counting by fabric tells you which provinces are present; rim-to-base ratios and estimated vessel equivalents (EVEs) tell you how many vessels, and therefore how fast material accumulated. 3,200 sherds sounds impressive but might represent only forty vessels spread over two centuries - ordinary domestic consumption. Four hundred vessels in two or three phases means sustained throughput and real storage economy. Quantification converts an impressive-sounding number into a rate, and rates are what distinguish household from commercial use.
Second-best, if affordable: residue analysis on the dolium fabric (oil, fish sauce, wine, pitch). Organic residue work often fails on coarse wares, so it should not be the sole basis for a label.
Falsification conditions I would state in the report:
- A press bed, vat or settling tank found beneath or beside the floor - this would support processing.
- A short, dense deposit of hundreds of Dressel 20 with tituli picti naming a consignment or negotiator - this would support commercial redistribution.
- Ship fittings in a sealed, naval-associated context (graffiti of a fleet, a harbour mud deposit) - this would rescue “naval stores”.
Naming the result that would prove you wrong is not weakness; it is what makes the label scientific rather than rhetorical.