22 ancient amphoras found off the Albanian coast

If you search [Corinthian A amphoras] presently, then this current story comes up about a recent discovery off the Albanian coast several times. All the stories use the same photograph except one, and they all use the same words. They're basically all copy/paste.

ABC News is typical.

And that's a bummer because the photo does not show the shape very well.

Corinthian A appears to have a short neck and round body with two handles from neck to body. Those handles would have been used to tie them into place inside the ship's hull so they don't rock around all over the place in rough water. But the photo does not show the base. Does the amphora come to a point or what? Is it really this short and squat? What does the bottom look like? Does it come to a point like most of them do?

And none of the articles mention all the other pervious discoveries around the Albanian coast. And they don't mention exactly where on the Albanian coast except to mention two ancient cities that only archaeologists studying this place and era would appreciate. 

This is actually just one of quite a lot of discoveries around this area. RPM Nautical Foundation Control F [Albania] and the whole page lights up. The photos show actual shipwrecks, not just the amphoras. 

Amphoras are fascinating. 

They're beautiful. Elegant. They are art.

They were used to ship olive oil and wine. Everyone made these things, everywhere, throughout the and ancient world. 

And they were also used in homes for the same purpose.

But what happens to them? Are they taken off the ships and sold as they are or are the contents transferred to more attractive decorated amphoras? We see these all over the place used in household as well and they always come with their own stand. They're made to be unable to stand on their own. Why would they even be made that way? Why not give them a base?

Wouldn't it be better for your jar of wine or olive oil to stand on its own? These things never really made that much sense.

The shape is to collect solid particles. I think. But that still doesn't answer why they don't have a base. Some amphora were so large they required two men to handle them. So they're big heavy difficult to manage unwieldy containers when filled. How can you even pour them without spilling all over the place? They just seem like a bad idea and yet the entire ancient world used them including China. 

But they sure make lovely objects d'art. If not entirely impractical. 

PDF ASCSA.edu is the most useful page that I've seen.

Oh, that's just great

a is B

b is A'

c is A'

d is A

So the type that they recently found is D, the last one. Short squat jars with a little knob on the bottom. They probably set them in a layer of sand. Then tied them together with rope through the handles. 

What a drag. 

Can you imagine this being your job? Your whole working life loading and unloading these stupid jars just to get olive oil and wine moved around. Then you probably had to row the boat when there wasn't any wind or they had to maneuver around rocks and inside of ports. They probably used slaves. This just looks like the sort of thing relegated to slave labor.

Now these jars are making me sad. 

Whereas until now I always regarded them as lovely and fascinating, now I associate them with slaves.

I was thinking about the kind we see in museums that were used in homes. The ones highly decoratd, not the ones loaded onto ships by the hundreds.

I was visualizing the host of a party lifting them out and pouring out their bounty. But those were most likely moved by slaves also. Or at least moved around by slave labor. And tipped to pour by slaves. And if anything happened to any of these vases then the slave would be punished for wasting the goods. Not just the container. They'd be whipped. And now the whole thing is just such a total drag.

Now I will see these amphora and think what horrible cultures. 

The amphora PDF continues with photographs. Very good ones too. All the Type A amphora are printed sideways. While the Type B amphora are printed upright. So you have to tilt your head and your laptop to look at the Type A amphoras. 

They're not the most elegant amphoras we've seen. Usually they're taller and more slender. They often have markings, impressions, denoting their place of origin and often naming the contents, and sometimes the name of the ship's foreman so these markings are incredibly useful to researchers. 

One website said the markings were made before firing. That's funny. The impressions would be made while the clay was still wet. 

It's funny because really smart people who never worked with ceramics, never took an art class, never hung out in a hobby ceramic shop, have no idea how things are made. A very smart woman I know, Mensa-level smartness, quite successful in her career that depends on her intellect (making custom batteries) went with me to an art exhibition about Babylonia. Obviously the show had a lot of clay tablets covered with markings. She said to me, "Can you imagine how difficult it was to gouge out all those markings in hard clay?"

I was stunned. 

I tried not to laugh at her but inside I was cracking up and bent over hysterically. She's that smart about everything but never put it together artistically the clay was wet and the marks were made by rapidly jabbing a reed that has an elongated triangular shape when cut, so the reed is like a pen that the scribe jabs into wet clay, twisting the reed back and forth as they go, and they did this fast as people speak. That's why the markings became more and more abbreviated over time. At first the markings resembled the subject, as little pictures, then later the makings barely resembled the original markings maintaining only the essence of the originals. The sribes were fast. And they didn't waste clay either. They used the front, and back, and the sides of the clay tablets. They look like clay pillows covered with triangular markings. 

Can you imagine being a museum worker and being given a pile of pieces of ceramic and told to reconstruct them as a three dimensional puzzle back into the shape of an amphora? We see in the photographs that sometimes more pieces are missing than pieces extant. They guessed. A lot.

Here are nine Corinthian Type B amphora published to the PDF for comparison. There are hardly any differences to speak of.

The news stories do not show you where Albania is. 

It's on the opposite side of the Adriatic sea across from the boot of Italy.

But that's a large coastline and the article does not specify the exact spot except by ancient names.

It's that little hook under the A in the word Albania. But not the whole thing. Karaburun Peninsula. The whole place is lousy with shipwrecks.