Transport amphorae Lamboglia 2 and Dressel 6A: Italy and/or Dalmatia? Some clarifications

After nearly 30 years of study and research on Roman amphorae from Adriatic Italy and 10 years after our last summary, we believe it is time to re-address the issue of the production of containers used for the wine trade. Our contributions, appearing in Italian and French journals, have had limited circulation in the Anglophone world, allowing for some debatable historical-economic reconstructions, and particularly one in this journal (vol. 22, 2009), with the risk that they might be accepted without proper discussion. In that article, central Dalmatia was said to have played a pioneering, primary role in the production and export of Republican wine amphorae (Lamboglia 2) in the Mediterranean, an idea which the same author has recently reiterated, while "any other productions of Lamboglia two that eventually occurred on either side of the Adriatic would have been on a much smaller scale and traded within a regional area or in smaller numbers." These conclusions do not seem to take into sufficient consideration either the reality of the discoveries of production centers in Italy or the quantity of intact amphorae found during the early phases of several reclamation and drainage projects, thanks to which typo-chronological seriations have been improved. [Publication Abstract]