Instrumentum domesticum is the modern Latin term used to describe a range of inscriptions incised, stamped, or painted on a range of portable artifacts from the ancient world (W. V. Harris 1993a). Examples include: stamps and/or molded marks on pottery vessels and amphorae, glass, bricks and tiles, lead pipes, wooden barrels, etc.; control stamps on metal ingots and quarried stone; metal tags and lead seals used in the transport of goods; and graffiti (often denoting ownership of personal artifacts). The definition normally excludes portable documents such as coins, papyri, ostraca, or writing tablets, as well as all inscriptions on stone. Although much of the material simply provides evidence of the ability of people to write their own names on their possessions (though this is not without interest in itself), some of these inscriptions can be quite detailed and highly informative about the operation of ancient society and institutions. A good example is provided by the sets of painted inscriptions (tituli picti) on an olive-oil amphora from southern Spain, generally known as the Dressel 20 type (Keay 1988: 98-104). This globular jar, with average volume of c.70 liters, reveals Roman procedures governing the bottling of olive oil at port sites along the navigable Guadalquivir river, and was evidently designed to rigorously control trade and minimize fraud. The amphorae were first weighed empty and this figure was marked on the vessel; next came the name of the merchant who was to transport the oil overseas; in a third line the weight of oil contained in the amphora was added (after reweighing and deducting the empty amphora); and a fourth set of notations reveals the names and signatures of those responsible for carrying out and monitoring the weighing, as well as an indication of the actual farm from where the oil originated. The whole process of trade in Spanish olive oil appears to have been highly regulated from the farm to the mass disposal of amphorae on Monte Testaccio, a 50 meter-high and 1 kilometer-circumference mountain of potsherds in the commercial area of Rome (Rodriguez Almeida 1984; Blasquez Martinez and Remesal Rodriguez 1999/2003). A series of late Roman ostraca from the harbor area at Carthage attest to the existence of a similarly sophisticated system for weighing and stock-taking controls of olive oil passing through imperial warehouses there (Pena 1998). In both cases, the detailed nature of the recording systems put in place suggests a connection with the annona and may be thought characteristic of the sort of economic controls governing its operation.
World History
