Program on Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Materials at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ATAM is a Division of the Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program

Excavations of a late Roman domus (town house) on the eastern slope of the Palatine Hill in Rome, yielded more than 15 tons of ceramics. The ongoing excavation is directed by Eric Hostetter (Art History, UIUC) and sponsored by the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma and the American Academy in Rome. Five classes of domestic pottery presumed to be of local or regional manufacture, based upon the distribution of their find spots in Rome and central Italy, were tested by NAA, along with reference materials, including Arretine sigillata, Slip-decorated ware, and fired samples of clay from the Janiculum Hill in Rome. One of the ultimate goals of this work is to achieve a clearer understanding of the movement of craft goods into the city of Rome during the late Imperial period (4th and 5th centuries AD).

The results indicate that three of the wares (undecorated fineware, color-coat fineware, and glazed fineware) derived from a common source or set of sources. Slight discrepancies between glazed fineware and the two other finewares are thought to be a function of time (the samples of glazed fineware were manufactured ca. 100 years before the other fineware). Moreover, chemical similarities between the majority of the undecorated and color-coat fineware samples and the Janiculum clays may point to a workshop in Rome. The two other classes of pottery, Roman red-slip A and Roman red-slip B, are distinct ceramic traditions; however, their origins remain undetermined.

Wisseman, S., Pena, J. T., De Sena, E. & Landsberger, S. (1994). Neutron Activation Analysis of Roman Fineware Pottery from the Palatine Hill in Rome. In (P. Vincenzini, Ed) The Ceramics Cultural Heritage, Proceedings of the International Symposium "The Ceramics Heritage," 8th CIMTEC-World Ceramics Congress and Forum on New Materials (Florence, June 28-July 2, 1994).

De Sena, E., Landsberger, S., Pena, J. T. & Wisseman, S. (1995). Analysis of Ancient Pottery from the Palatine Hill in Rome. J. Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry 196.2: 223-234.

Copyright 1999. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.