Amphora Lids

         A small number of amphora lids along with a number of sherds of such were found throughout the site.  With a single exception, all examples of lids were thin plain disks, light brown in color and fabric.  Many such lids were found in the Aqaba kilns, where they were “flat or very slightly concave disks which rest precisely on the amphora rim” inside the mouth (Melkawi, Amr, and Whitcomb 1994: 460).

Two lids at Black Assarca were found in place in amphora mouths (as pictured above).  One rested on the lip inside a globular amphora mouth (see above center for an example of the mouth and lip) and was set in a resinous substance similar to that found lining the interior of the Ayla-Axum amphora sherds.  One other lid found fixed in the mouth of a globular amphora (above right) was fashioned from a sherd recycled from some other vessel, as indicated by rilling on its exposed face.   Obviously a ceramic piece from a broken vessel had been purposefully knapped into a disk-shape for this use.  Such recycling of sherds for lids is not unknown.  The seventh-century shipwreck at Yassiada, Turkey, contained 165 of these of varying diameters and thicknesses (Bass, 1982: 160-61).