Hispania and the Roman Mediterranean AD 100–700: Ceramicsand Trade (review)

Kathleen Warner Slane

Journal of Late Antiquity, Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 2011, pp. 175-177(Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/jla.2011.0004

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Book Reviews 175

are given appealing signifi cance, such as the discussion of the mustachioed apostle in the Arian baptistery proces-sion (p.187). She is crucially attentive to the question of later modifi cations of the mosaics—a matter that makes discus-sions of their interpretation extremely vexing. She provides her own hypotheti-cal interpretations of compositional pro-grams, as in her thoughtful analysis of the iconographic scheme in the San Vitale presbytery (pp. 243–50). In this instance, she offers her own insight into the potential meaning of the whole, a move that makes this book rise above merely reporting (and sometimes critiquing) what other historians have proposed. A book on Ravenna deserves to be lavish so the presence of a mere handful of color plates is regrettable. Yet, I suppose, that color photos of nearly all of the monu-ments discussed in the book are readily available on the Internet is a consolation. Thankfully, black and white photos as well as drawings are appropriately placed within the text itself.

In conclusion, I highly recommend this book and am grateful to the author for its publication.

Hispania and the Roman Mediterranean AD 100–700: Ceramics and TradePaul ReynoldsLondon: Duckworth, 2010. Pp. xi + 372. ISBN 978–0-7156–3862–0

Reviewed by Kathleen Warner Slane

(University of Missouri-Columbia)

In this ambitious book Paul Reynolds an-alyzes the supply and exchange of major liquid commodities (olive oil, fi sh sauce, and wine) through the Mediterranean from the Flavian period until some time in the seventh century. His evidence is

primarily the distribution patterns of var-ious amphora types and the location and history of the production centers of both ceramics and commodities. The book is divided into four chapters that (1) set the stage by looking at the growth of oil and garum production in Hispania and Tuni-sia and of wine production for regional markets in the west and for long distance trade from the Black Sea and the Aegean; (2) trace the distribution within the Span-ish peninsula of African Red Slip ware (Tunisia), Late Roman C (shipped from the ports near Pergamum), and various regional Spanish and south Gallic fi ne wares between the Severan period and the time of Justinian; (3) analyze the ex-port of Spanish oil and fi sh sauce chron-ologically from the third through the fi fth century in the context of competing sources of supply; and (4) compare and contrast the import patterns of Byzantine and Vandal sites in Spain and the Italian peninsula as long-distance trade became regional or ceased altogether in the later sixth and seventh century. The evidence is presented in numerous tables setting out the proportions of oil, wine, and fi sh im-ports from provincial regions (North Af-rica, Spain, the Aegean) from dated pot-tery dumps in Marseilles, Rome, Butrint, and Beirut as well as the eastern coast of Spain and Britain, together with an as-sessment of the chronology of numerous kiln sites and of villas that produced the commodities in Hispania.

The documentation is prodigious: 36 pages of maps and profi les, 36 pages of tables, 78 pages of notes to the text, and a 38-page bibliography, not to mention several indices; the text itself is only 156 pages. Anyone who intends to use the book should spend some time analyzing the tables, which, as usual, lie at the heart of Reynolds’ analysis. Some are based on

176 Journal of Late Antiquity

his own partly unpublished work (Beirut: Tables 4a, 4b, 9a, 9b, 15, 24; Benalúa: 22; Durres: 3a, 3b; Butrint: 25a, 25b); the remainder have been calculated from publications by other archaeologists. It is striking that the elements of such tables are no longer individual amphora or fi ne-ware types (as they have been since quan-tifi ed studies began in the 1970s) but production centers or provinces. How one gets from the older to the newer sort of table is illustrated in Table 22, in which we see that the 12 Baetican amphora fragments in fact belong to 6 types and the 22.6 percent eastern Mediterranean amphoras comprise 8 types. This kind of amalgamation, impossible until enough sources were identifi ed, brings quantifi ed studies to a point where historians can begin to use them. Furthermore, for the fi rst and early second centuries (which is why the book had to begin ca.100) it is also possible, because of the large num-bers of dipinti preserved at Pompeii and Ostia and the detailed studies of Clem-entina Panella in the Ostia reports, to build tables around liquid commodities, for example,, the Meta Sudans deposit of 64–68 CE had 11 percent African wine amphoras, 0.4 percent African oil, 0.6 percent African garum, and 2.3 percent unclassifi ed (Table 1a, 1b, 6a, 11, and 17a). In later centuries, when such dip-inti have not been reported, Reynolds is able to continue discussing commodities using a combination of typological argu-ment and knowledge of regional prod-ucts based on the earlier dipinti. (This is why the evidence for the production of oil, wine, and fi sh sauce in the Mediter-ranean is discussed in the fi rst chapter.)

The book lives up to its title. Discus-sions of small inland sites in Spain and the regional variations in Spanish fi ne wares, liquid commodities, and cooking

pots derived from coastal sites are inter-polated between equally detailed discus-sions of coastal sites elsewhere in the Mediterranean (and of Dichin in Bul-garia). Despite maps of Hispania and of the Mediterranean showing place names mentioned in the text, it is often very hard to follow as the discussion can jump from Vila-roma 2 to Beirut to Marseille to Tar-ragona (Torre de l’Audiència 1A-B) to Rome in a single paragraph. Sometimes a paragraph summarizes where ampho-ras from a single source are found; the next may list the fi nds of several amphora types (Baetican, Tunisian, Syrian) from a series of single deposits in Spain, and the next is arguing the date of a particular type. All of these details are necessary but reading the whole book through as a text is very diffi cult. Much better to dip into it for single sections or to read Reynolds’s “Hispania in the Late Roman Mediterranean: Ceramics and Trade,” in K. Bowes, M. Kulikowski, eds., Hispania in Late Antiquity: Current Perspectives (Leiden, 2005), pp. 369–486, with much of the same text and many of the same tables, profi les and maps, but without the details. (Unfortunately, it lacks the dis-cussion of the sixth and seventh centuries provided here.)

A groundbreaking study such as this leaves plenty of room for disagree-ment. For example, I do not accept the so-called “development” of Pompeii 5 into LRA 1, although I, too, think that both were made in the Bay of Iskenderun. I am doubtful of the view that the west-ern Mediterranean produced oil and fi sh sauce whereas the Aegean and the Levant produced and shipped only wine (for 700 years! pp. 49–50), particularly because LRA 1 and LRA 2, the most common late Roman amphoras on many (eastern and) western sites, have usually been thought

Book Reviews 177

to carry oil rather than wine. The con-tents of fi fth- to seventh-century contain-ers are particularly problematic: in earlier work Reynolds not only accepted oil as the main content of LRA 1 but supposed that the small Tunisian spatheia con-tained either wine or oil, whereas here he has opted for fi sh sauce or olives. Many of the data are unpublished and can’t be verifi ed. Reynolds has a phenomenal eye for fabrics and is able to distinguish among a very large number of Levan-tine sources (see fi g. 13) but no one else can, or does, report like this and little of it has been tested either scientifi cally or through publication. In other cases reporting is clearly incomplete: in Table 23, for instance, it is certain that the amphoras and coarse wares were under-reported (see Table 25a, there are always more amphoras and coarse wares than fi ne wares or lamps in a deposit). More subtle is the selectivity of other tables where only seven or eight amphora types are recorded. Many of the goals dear to the hearts of twentieth-century archae-ologists—complete reporting of data (no cherry-picking), fi rm stratigraphic con-trol, and prompt publication—have been sidelined in order to present the data reported here. Reynolds himself seems to have rejected the model he suggested in Trade in the Western Mediterranean, AD 400–700 (BAR-IS 604, 1995), pp. 125, 127–29, in which the movement of “secondary” goods (fi ne wares and garum) or “tertiary” goods (cooking pots) always depended on the frequency and distribution of primary food stuffs and raw materials (amphoras). And we should not forget that grain, timber, mar-ble, and other raw materials, “primary” goods essential to the Roman economy in the Mediterranean, are not included in this study. Only time will tell how many

modifi cations will be needed to the broad picture or to the details. There is now, however, a starting point for archaeo-logical discussion of the Mediterranean economy.

Early Jewish Magic: Research, Method, SourcesYuval HarariThe Bialik Institute, Yad Ben-Zvi and the Hebrew University: Jerusalem, 2010. Pp. xi + 372. ISBN 978–0-7156–3862–0

Reviewed by Hagith Sivan

(University of Kansas)

It seems nothing short of miraculous that in the last two years no less than two ma-jor books on Jewish magic in antiquity appeared, both by Israeli scholars, and both aspiring to replace the century-old masterpiece of Ludwig (Lajos) Blau (Das altjüdische Zauberwesen 1898; 1914). One is by Gideon Bohak (Ancient Jew-ish Magic: A History, 2008); the other, reviewed here, by Yuval Harari, is in Hebrew with a brief table of contents in English. Harari sets out to explore major puzzles—What is “magic”? Where does “religion” end and where does “magic” begin? What language did “magic” and “magicians” employ? How Jewish was Jewish magic? How was it formed, for-mulated and transmitted? How was it re-alized, executed, and for what purposes? To what extent were magic and gnosti-cism synonymous in ancient Judaism?

The book is divided into two parts, one devoted primarily to theories (pp. 17–155); the other focusing on primary texts. The fi rst chapter (“Magic and the Study of Religion”) provides a survey of infl uential theories of “religion” and “magic” with the obligatory nod to Tyler, Spencer, Frazer, Freud and others; a brief “sociology of magic” (Durkheim, Weber,