Harris’s method makes it possible to construct the relative chronology of a site by defining the stratigraphic relations between units within it. The establishment of an absolute chronology, however, usually depends on the presence of securely datable objects in any one layer. One such object is pottery. Its importance, for both classical and late antique archaeology, cannot be exaggerated. Pottery styles change like any other fashion and, although pots break easily, the resulting fragments are not destroyed. A layer usually contains, therefore, hundreds of shards that make it possible to relate that layer to a period, or even to an event. Pottery also tells us a lot about economy and trade. When studying the transport of grain, oil, and wine in Late Antiquity, we do not usually have at our disposal actual grain, oil, or wine: our deductions can be based only on the pottery within which those materials were carried or stored. Yet, in only a few places have large amounts of late antique and early medieval pottery from stratigraphic excavations been analyzed. Of particular importance in this regard is the pottery from the Crypta Balbi excavation in Rome, which, together with some other important excavations, presents us with the following picture (Panella and Sagui 2001; Romei 2004).
In the fourth and early fifth centuries, Rome established a particularly close trading relationship with Carthage, thanks to the growing status of Constantinople, which diverted to itself much of the Egyptian grain that had earlier been sent to Rome. From about ad 330 onward, Rome depended increasingly on grain from Tunisia, and the African economy reached a peak as a result. Indeed, in the same period, 90 percent of the fine tableware in Rome came from Tunisia.
Between ad 430 and 450, that situation began to change. After the Vandals had conquered North Africa (a victory completed by ad 439), the agricultural productivity of the eastern provinces had to supply Rome as well as Constantinople, despite Rome’s now shrinking population. It is true that even the collapse of the Roman state in the west, traditionally dated to ad 476, did not bring the older pattern to an end, or at least not immediately. Recent analysis of pottery from modern stratigraphic excavations shows that, in addition to trade in food across the Mediterranean (which continued until the beginning of the seventh century), North African fine tableware was still dominant in Italy as late as ad 700. But there are signs of crisis. More common ware from Tunisia was gradually replaced by local Italian production. Similarly, while the proportion of grain, oil, and wine imported to Rome from the eastern Mediterranean steadily increased, North Africa remained an important source (although vegetables, milk, and eggs came from regional production).
Traces of that immense movement of food can be found in the large number of amphorae found in Rome. Recent excavations in the Crypta Balbi confirm the view that such imports, from both North Africa and the east, continued in the second half of the seventh century, even after the Arab conquest of Syria and Egypt. But the trade was less extensive than before, and valuable goods like high quality wines now constituted a prominent proportion of the total - imports for the elite. Then, in the eighth century, almost all the earlier amphora types disappear, and there is scarcely any evidence at all that food was imported, whether from North Africa or from the eastern Mediterranean. At the same time, the importation of not only finer tableware but also of more common ware is interrupted. There is no evidence in Rome that pottery was imported from North Africa after the Arab conquest of Carthage in AD 698. There are not even any eighth-century Islamic amphorae that suggest importation from areas now controlled by the Arabs, let alone from Byzantium. Recent archaeological evidence suggests, from the late fifth century, a corresponding dependence on wine from Campania. By the eighth century, most imports to Rome came from such places in the southern half of the peninsula. Although it is not always possible to distinguish between amphorae from Campania, Calabria, or Sicily, it is obvious that the circulation of goods in the eighth century was much more limited than before. Seventh-century vessels designed for transportation make up almost 50 percent of the total surviving pottery material: similar vessels from the eighth century make up only about 25 percent.
So, even in the seventh century, pottery imported to Italy from North Africa was very similar to that used in the first centuries of the empire. Despite the political and institutional changes that often get attention in handbooks, there is a clear continuity in material culture, and therefore in everyday life. Scholars may discuss whether the break in Mediterranean trade (and thus in material culture) occurred shortly before or shortly after ad 700; but, according to the pottery from the Crypta Balbi excavation and other similar excavations, that is more or less when we have to think of antiquity as ending, at least in Rome. The profound changes in material culture that resulted must reflect even deeper changes at the political, institutional, economic, and social levels (Panella and Sagui 2001: 815).
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