Panel 5.12 – Revisiting the Roles of Roman Mediterraean Ports


Organiser/Chair:

  • Simon Keay (University of Southampton)

External Discussant:

  • Maria Luisa Piccino (Università di Genova)

Panel abstract

Over twenty years ago in 1997 Xavier Nieto proposed a new interpretation of the role played by Roman Mediterranean ports, putting forward a model that that emphasized distribution and re-distribution at the expense of cabotage. He argued for a hierarchy of ‘main’ and ‘secondary’ ports, as well as direct relationships between distant ‘main’ ports, and the regionally based dependence of ‘secondary ports’ upon the ‘main ports. These ideas were based upon his belief that the way in which homogeneous or heterogeneous cargoes were stored on shipwrecks provides us with a clue as to whether a cargo was loaded at a main or secondary port.

This model has made a very important contribution to our understanding of the organization of Roman Mediterranean commerce. Since then, however, continued research into ports, shipwrecks and their cargoes and epigraphic and historical records means that the time is ripe to further explore his concepts and their implications for our understanding of Roman Mediterranean commerce. In particular, new research suggests that the notion of ‘main’ and ‘complementary’ cargoes is perhaps not as clear-cut as it might at first appear. Also, the sheer density of coastal sites involved in ship-based activity would appear to be at odds with the binary concept of main and secondary ports. The time is ripe, therefore, for building upon and enriching earlier research into the roles into Roman Mediterranean ports.

This panel is based upon research being undertaken by the ERC Advanced Grant funded Rome’s Mediterranean Ports (RoMP)/Portuslimen project. It is an inter-disciplinary project that is analyzing archaeological, geo-archaeological, historical, epigraphic and iconographic evidence from a range of some 32 early Imperial ports from across the Mediterranean. The character, development and roles of ports, as well as their administration and connections, are the main focus of the research. The papers that are presented here will address issues that are central to offering a more nuanced reading of port functions. All the papers work from the belief that ports should not be viewed simply as self-evident inter-connected nodes. They argue instead that they should be understood as being embedded within a series of interlocking port-systems composed of a complex hierarchy of sites at the regional level. In this context, the value of such concepts as transshipment, entrepot, roadstead and hubs are looked at in terms of the available archaeological evidence from the port systems of Rome, Tarraco and Narbo. Furthermore, the structure of commerce and trade, the roles of their performers involved, and the cycle of mediation followed by traded goods from production and consumption will also be discussed. These papers will also explore the articulation between the archaeological evidence (including the epigraphy of merchandise) and the written sources for understanding trade patterns. There will also be reflection on research into later periods which have promoted more complex patterns of port hierarchy that are also relevant to the debate.

Paper abstracts

1. Simon Keay (University of Southampton)

Towards a Revised Understanding of the Commercial roles of Portus and Ostia
It is a paradox that despite the many years of archaeological and epigraphic research which make Portus and Ostia amongst the best documented ports of the Roman Mediterranean, much remains to be understood about the roles that they played in supplying Imperial Rome and in broader commercial activity across the Mediterranean.
After decades of research focused primarily upon Ostia, recent work has focused upon Portus with a view to defining its extent, character and relationship to Ostia and Rome. This has suggested that following its enlargement by Trajan, Portus became the principal focus of import, trans-shipment and storage of goods bound for Rome, a large proportion of which would have been contracted by the State. It has also been suggested that the port must have been involved to at least some extent in export and re-distribution as well. While this could have been supplemented by goods stored in warehouses at Ostia, the likely congestion that would have built up on the Tiber and Portus is an argument that has suggested that a significant proportion of the warehouse capacity at Ostia could have been destined to serve the storage needs of its own population or, indeed, could have been re-distributed to elsewhere in the Mediterranean directly from Ostia itself.
Recent geophysical surveys in the Isola Sacra shed further light on this issue. It suggests that the northern limit of Ostia was not formed by the Tiber, but that it lay c. 300m to the north of it in the southern part of the Isola Sacra. This new northern sector of the river port was comprised of very large warehouses and other public buildings of likely early Imperial date. It was bounded by a substantial wall circuit to the north which continued the line of the Republican wall to the south. Another discovery has been a major new canal that ran southwards from Portus parallel to the Via Flavia. Current evidence suggests that its southern stretch lay a short distance to the west of the newly discovered warehouses and that it flowed into the Tiber on the western side of Ostia.
At one level, this new evidence underlines the close relationship of Portus and Ostia and supports the idea that they were part of an integrated port system geared to serving Rome. At another, however, it greatly increases the storage at Ostia, seemingly far exceeding what would have been needed for the needs of its population alone. This suggests that Ostia must have played a major role in the supply of Rome together with Portus. If so, it raises questions about how the port authorities at Ostia and at Portus were able to successfully coordinate the movement of traffic up and down the Tiber to Rome, without incurring severe congestion. An alternative possibility is that the newly discovered warehouses were designed to facilitate shipment of cargoes that were received from Portus and were destined for re-export to the Mediterranean at large from Ostia. Given the well-known dangers of the mouth of the Tiber and the shallowness and small scale of the harbour at Ostia, this could only have been accomplished with the use of lighters serving larger capacity ships moored offshore.
This paper reviews these issues and argues that the roles of Ostia and Portus in supplying Rome cannot be considered in isolation. They were clearly complementary, and also need to be understood in the context of their relationships to other attested ports, anchorages and road stations within the broader port system of Imperial Rome. The paper ends with a brief evaluation of the roles and relationships of Portus and Ostia to some of these, which range from Santa Severa and Centumcellae in the north, down to Ardea, Antium, Terracina and Puteoli in the south.

 

2. Pascal Arnaud (Université Lyon 2)

Main and secondary cargoes in the light of charter-parties and fiscality
One of the grounds of the notions of main and secondary cargo is the postulate that “secondary cargoes” circulated for nothing and for that reason could be of little commercial value. They allegedly circulated because transported for free, while the main cargo would have alone justified the cost of transportation from a point to another.
This point of view is partly supported by the possibility, described by the Digest, of hiring an entire ship (ex aversione) whose capacity, expressed in modii or in amphorae had been stated. Then the fee was paid for the full capacity of the boat, and it did not matter whether the boat was loaded at her full capacity or not, and what she was loaded with. But that kind of contract seems to be relating to the ship as an object, and not to transportation.
Transportation was usually subject to specific contracts, usually called naulotikaï, very similar in form and content to medieval and modern charter-parties. Extant charter-parties, and some of their usual clauses preserved in the Digest, inform us that all items brought into a ship were identified in the contract and that a special fee was agreed for each of these items. The price was calculated on the ground of unitary cost of the piece for all kinds of species to be transported multiplied by the number of pieces per species.
In the case of mixed cargoes, all elements of the cargo were subject to specific fees. No element of the cargo was transported for free. There was likely no “main” or “secondary” cargoes, but various kinds of merchandize on board that all were subject to transport fees and all were intended to be sold at destination with substantial benefits. They were just complementary from an economic point of view and could hopefully generate profit in a distant market.
Destination(s), loading and unloading times and conditions were also clearly specified in the charter-party, as well as penalties and fines in case one of the contractors would fail to respect the agreed terms of the contract.
The point of view of Roman charter-parties leads us to a much more planned model of trade, both at long and short distance, that leave little space for tramping patterns of trade. It illustrates how different was the interest and value of time for the merchant and for the shipper. The latter’s point of view has long been under-evaluated.
The Annona is a case per se. In order to fit with the shipper’s interest and prompt wealthy investors to build larger ships and to put these at the service of the Annona, shippers were allowed to bring altogether with public grain, private cargoes, at least until AD 395.
Unloading part of the cargo en route and reloading it was obviously possible. It had to be planned and was probably difficult to imagine outside of a single fiscal district.
More attention paid to the point of view of the shipper unveils part of the frames of port networks of the Roman Mediterranean.

 

3. Emilia Mataix (University of Southampton)

Taking a closer look: reconsidering cargoes from the perspective of the epigraphy of merchandize (scripta commercii)
The material remains of Roman wrecks and their cargoes help characterized the mechanisms employed in trade in the Roman Imperial era. The merchandize traded through Roman Mediterranean ports was a key element for the agreements of sale and lease and hire. Elements of these contracts, as well as of the mechanisms and principles of Roman law that guided them, are evidenced though the inscriptions written in merchandise. This approach challenges the model proposed by Nieto in 1988 , describing the notions of “main” and “complementary” cargoes. This theory just considers the value of the goods, and not the importance of the cargo or the role of law to shape the commercial relations held by the parties in trade. In addition, his theory was based upon the perspective of the shipper, and not the merchant, who shipped a whole or partial cargo along a specified route. Through the evidence of the cargoes from different wrecks and the material record evidencing the agreements sale and transport, I will distinguish diverse scenarios of distribution.
This communication will also consider the role of port systems, where connectivity between the different installations and places that composed them was key to ensuring the movement of ships and their cargoes. Furthermore, the significance of structures involved in the transhipment of goods or the warehouses where cargoes were stored, is analysed in terms of the issues that were considered by the parties involved in commerce when ships were loaded and before they set sail. Particular focus here will be upon the evidence provided by the epigraphy of merchandise and the legal sources. I will first challenge the idea that there was a hierarchy of transported goods within a cargo from the perspective of Roman legal sources and the epigraphy of merchandise that describes trade agreements. Secondly, I will use the conclusions drawn from this to study some specific examples of wrecks from different areas and trading routes. I conclude by arguing that there was no such thing as a ‘typical’ cargo and the different goods carried on Roman ships were transported and sold in different ways.

 

4. Marie-Pierre Jezegou (DRASSM-Ministère de la Culture, France)

L'activité du port de Narbonne dans le cadre du modèle redistribution/redistribution : retour sur un échantillon d'épaves du golfe du Lion et du littoral provençal de la fin de la République au IIIe siècle
L'activité du port de Narbonne dans le cadre du modèle distribution/redistribution : retour sur un échantillon d'épaves du golfe du Lion et du littoral provençal de la fin de la République au IIIe siècle. Les fouilles récentes du port de Narbonne ont révélé l’implantation et l’entretien continu, durant au moins quatre siècles, dans un contexte environnemental difficile, d’un des plus importants ports de Méditerranée occidentale. Néanmoins à ce jour, si son activité économique est bien perçue à travers l’iconographie et l’épigraphie amphorique et surtout lapidaire, aucune étude n’a tenté d’évaluer, à partir d’un corpus d’épaves pourtant abondant bien que pas toujours exploitable en terme d’assemblage des cargaisons en raison le plus souvent de naufrages à faible profondeur, la place de Narbonne dans le cadre du modèle évoqué ci-dessus. Loin d’être uniquement un grand port d’importation et d’exportation, Narbonne a pris également une place importante dans les échanges interprovinciaux et régionaux. Si à ce jour, le maillage portuaire du Narbonnais et des territoires voisins ne se perçoit pas encore aisément, faute d’études en ce sens, la complexité de l’activité re-distributrice et l’évolution de ses modalités sur plusieurs siècles peut être envisagée. Dans cette optique nous essaierons également d’évaluer le ratio entre pertinence et contraintes des schémas « cargaison principale et secondaire » et « port principal versus port secondaire ». La diversité des entreprises commerciales que l’on perçoit à travers l’hétérogénéité de la navigation se révèle bien plus complexe et elle témoigne surtout de l’évolution des contextes socio-économiques.

 

5. Nicolas Carayon (University of Southampton)

A functional approach to the harbour system of Narbo Martius
The recent research undertaken in the area of Narbonne (France) has revealed a great number of sites occupied during the Roman period. These sites are located along the ancient Atax River, around the lagoon and on the islands of the lagoon. They were provided with natural or artificial harbour facilities. The question of their implications within the harbours activities of the emporion of all Gaul in the words of Strabo (4, 1, 12) is now relevant. Within the framework of the ERC Rome’s Mediterranean Ports Projects, we demonstrates that the port of Narbo Martius must be considered as a harbour system instead of a centralised city-port. The nature and the harbour potential of the numerous coastal sites make it possible to suggest different hypotheses about the functioning of one of the more important ports of the western Mediterranean. This paper aims to reconsider the river, lagoon and maritime port of the capital of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis by emphasizing a functional approach. It raises the question of the relationship between the urban river port at Narbonne and the secondary harbour sites, implying both private and public development, transhipment and other ports operations. The functional approach also investigates the possible integration of several specialised sites that are not usually considered as forming part of ancient ports (namely quarries, workshops, rural sites) within the harbour system.