Graeco-Italic amphorae in the region of Ostia: archaeology and archaeometry

Recent excavations carried out by the Soprintendenza archeologica di Ostia in the Ager Portuensis near Ostia brought to light a number of republican sites which are thought to be connected to the production and commercialization of salt. This region has played an important role in Rome’s history, because of the presence of the salt marshes and its strategic position on the mouth of the Tiber. The excavated contexts contain graeco-italic wine amphorae of types 5, 5-6 and 6 of van der Mersch’s classification associated with black-slip ware and local common wares. The circulation of wine and amphorae in Northern Latium in general has not been studied yet, and these excavations provide the opportunity for an assessment of the situation in the republican period (www.immensaaequora.org). The archaeometric study comprises petrographical and chemical analyses (X-ray Fluorescence WDS) chosen among amphorae from various sites. The provenance determination relies on existing databases of kiln sites of Roman Amphorae (Università La Sapienza, Facoltà di Lettere, Roma, Project Immensa Aequora; Laboratoire de céramologie de Lyon; Dpt of geosciences of the University of Fribourg)

Decision Problems For Convex Languages

In this paper we examine decision problems associated with various classes of convex languages, studied by Ang and Brzozowski (under the name "continuous languages"). We show that we can decide whether a given language L is prefix-, suffix-, factor-, or subword-convex in polynomial time if L is represented by a DFA, but that the problem is PSPACE-hard if L is represented by an NFA. In the case that a regular language is not convex, we prove tight upper bounds on the length of the shortest words demonstrating this fact, in terms of the number of states of an accepting DFA. Similar results are proved for some subclasses of convex languages: the prefix-, suffix-, factor-, and subword-closed languages, and the prefix-, suffix-, factor-, and subword-free languages.Comment: preliminary version. This version corrected one typo in Section 2.1.1, line

Assessment of the amphora spectrum in a rural Late La Tène settlement at Reinach-Nord, Basel region, Switzerland

The relatively high quantity of amphorae among the ceramic material discovered in Late La Tène structures at Reinach-Nord appears quite unusual at a rural settlement of this period in NE Switzerland and warranted further investigation. How does the amphora spectrum compare to the one of earlier or later sites in the region? On earlier settlements in the area between Lyon, the Upper Rhine Valley and NE Switzerland, we find Italic wine amphorae from mainly the same few provenances in Etruria (Albinia, Cosa), Northern Campania (Falerne/Mondragone) and Pompeii. On later sites in the same region (especially the Roman colonial towns of Lyon, Augst and Avenches), wine is only one of many commodities imported in amphorae and those of Italic provenance become rare. Macroscopic classification of the amphora fabrics, petrographic and chemical analyses by XRF-WDS of 35 samples representative of fabric groups and the comparison with a large database (> 500 analyses from kiln sites, > 500 analyses from consumer sites) reveal basically the typical spectrum known for the region with slight differences to earlier as well as to later sites. These are, in comparison to earlier sites: - a smaller proportion originating from important production sites in Etruria and Northern Campania, no representation of the Pompeii region; - some ascertained imports from Southern Latium; - presence of a non-Italic fabric indicative of Spanish origin (Tarraconnensis). In contrast to later sites, Reinach still shows almost exclusively wine amphorae mainly of Italic origin and a smaller number of different provenances, comparable to the diversity met on the earlier sites (10–15 groups)