Narrow Conical Form: Ayla-Axum Amphoras
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The most common ceramic type on the shipwreck was the conical amphora, found in all excavated sections of the site. Although all but one was broken, they formed a body of material cohesive in both form and style. Rilling was present on all the amphoras and their sherds excavated by the team. The ridges of this design were spaced approximately 1.2 cm. apart and was done with each part of the vessel still on the wheel. The rilling started immediately above the toe where there was a button 4.5 cm. in diameter and 1.5 cm. in height. From here it was a continuous spiral to the neck, interrupted only at the joint where the roughness of the rilling indicates that the pottery applied it by hand over the clay of the join.
The broken amphoras revealed that many were covered in a brown wash or slip. The interior fabric on many sherds was red-brown when wet, drying to brown. However, a number of sherds revealed a fabric that was light green-gray when wet, drying to a light gray. There were no overt differences between the amphoras or sherds with either the brown or gray fabric.
The interior faces of many sherds and amphora bodies were coated with a resin. Mediterranean wine amphoras were sealed with a resin to prevent the liquids inside from leaching out, and the same method is found at Black Assarca. One sherd, comprising approximately the lower 15 cm. of an amphora was split vertically down through the button. The piece was filled with a solid mass of resin, probably excess that collected in the bottom when the interior of the vessel was being sealed. This revealed that the button was not solid but hollow. Buttons generally receive the brunt of damage in shipping amphoras as they rest on dunnage, other cargoes, hulls, and docksides. None of the buttons examined showed wear beyond what one would expect for new vessels being transported from potter’s shop to dock to ship.
The narrow conical amphoras are a type lately called “Ayla-Axum” after the widest range of finds in the Red Sea region. The Ayla-Axum amphora has parallels from at least three terrestrial sites in Eritrea and Ethiopia: Aksum, where amphora sherds with gray fabric were found by the Deutsche Aksum Expedition (Zahn 1913: 208); Matara, dating to the 4th through 7th centuries (Anfray 1990: 118); and Adulis (Paribeni 1907: 551) examples of which are on display in the National Museum in Asmara. Other examples have been found at Berenike in Egypt, where the amphoras date firmly to an early 5th century context in what may be the best stratified examples (Hayes 1996: 159-61); from Aqaba in Jordan where the most examples have been found (see below); at Elephantine Island, Egypt (Gempeler 1992: 191); and in the Mediterranean such as on the late 6th-century shipwreck at Iskandil Burnu, Turkey, as well as in Spain and Carthage in strata datable from the mid-fourth to the sixth centuries (Keay 1986: 356, 358, 471).
As an origin point for the ceramic cargo of transport containers, Aqaba is the obvious choice. Excavations by the Roman Aqaba Project, under the direction of S. Thomas Parker throughout the late 1990s into the 2000s, revealed several thousand sherds of the Ayla-Axum amphora type. Parker notes that the amphora type at Aila first appears in the “late fourth or early fifth century and is common through the seventh century,” (Parker 2002: 425) a determination of the dating supported by the early 5th century finds at Berenike already mentioned (Hayes 1996: 159-61).
Located at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba, the ancient port city Aila/Ayla served as the nexus between the products of Palestine and Jordan and those of the Red Sea-Indian Ocean littoral in the Roman and Byzantine periods. During excavations in the 1980s of the early Islamic settlement Ayla, Whitcomb found that the foundations of the earliest Islamic structures were “consistently associated with late Byzantine ceramics” (Whitcomb 1994: 9). He discovered the narrow conical amphoras were “common at Aqaba but very rare elsewhere, raising questions as to the stylistic origin and distribution, and more importantly, the reasons for amphora productions at a site with no commercial product except for fish… and dates…” (Whitcomb 1989: 170). Whitcomb also noted that the amphoras and other ceramics at Aila exhibited stylistic similarities, not with Palestinian or Jordanian types, but with those from Coptic Egypt (Whitcomb 1989: 169-170). The lack of examples at other recorded sites in Palestine, Jordan and the Sinai implies “a strong local tradition” (Whitcomb 1989: 171) although similar styles have been found by Parker at Wadi Yitm near Aqaba (Whitcomb 1989: 169). The amphora published at this time was waster connected with kilns not far from the find site. The ceramic assemblage consisted of red or orange ware with a darker slip, but these also occurred as cream slipped ware, as well as cream ware (Whitcomb 1989: 169). The amphora and related ceramics date from the 6th century and into the 7th (Whitcomb 1989: 170).