// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did Dressel 1 say to its friend? You're a great dresser.

Dressel 1 is a type of Roman transport amphora. It was made in large quantities in the last two centuries of the Roman Republic and was used mainly to carry wine. It is the amphora type most often found on late Republican sites.

Most production took place on the Tyrrhenian side of Italy, between Etruria and Campania, where many kiln sites have been found. The vessels were traded across the western Mediterranean, and finds are known from Gaul, the Iberian Peninsula, central Europe and Britain.

Dressel 1 amphorae from Cosa.

Classification

The type is named after Heinrich Dressel, an epigraphist who worked in the late 19th century. He classified amphorae found in Rome and set out the results in a table, which later typologies have used as their basis.

Dressel 1 is usually divided into three sub-types, called 1A, 1B and 1C. The division comes from a scheme published by Nino Lamboglia in 1955 and is based mainly on the rim. On Dressel 1A the rim is triangular and strongly profiled; it is close in shape to the rims of Greco-Italic amphorae, and the two types are not always easy to tell apart. Dressel 1B has a thick collar rim set almost upright. Dressel 1C has a narrow mouth below a tall collar, which turns outwards on early examples. The bodies of the three sub-types differ less. Those of 1A and 1B are heavier and closer to a cylinder, while that of 1C is narrower at both ends. The neck of 1C is also wider where it joins the shoulder.

Dressel 1A amphora.

André Tchernia criticised these divisions in 1986. There is no agreed way of measuring sherds in order to assign them to a sub-type, so the divisions are difficult to apply to excavated material. In his report on the amphorae from Elms Farm at Heybridge, Paul Sealey followed Fanette Laubenheimer and did not divide the material.

Tyers uses two sub-types rather than three in his survey of the amphorae found in Britain. He describes 1A as having a short triangular rim and a short spike, and 1B as having a collar rim and a longer spike that flares slightly.

Diagram of a Dressel 1B amphora. 1: rim; 2: neck; 3: handle; 4: shoulder; 5: belly or body; 6: foot

Development and chronology

Dressel 1 developed from the late Greco-Italic wine amphorae, possibly from two of the types classified by Elizabeth Lyding Will in 1982. Tchernia dated the change to about 140–130 BCE. The change was gradual, and the older and newer forms overlap. Vessels of the intermediate form are called "Lyding Will e".

The dates of the sub-types are not agreed. Dressel 1A is usually dated to before the Caesarian period and is thought to have been made until about the middle of the 1st century BCE. A. J. Parker argued that these dates are too late and that the sub-type belongs mainly to the 2nd century BCE. Authorities differ on Dressel 1B. The Roman Amphorae digital resource dates its production from the last quarter of the 2nd century BCE to the last decade of the 1st century BCE. Tyers dates its appearance to shortly before the middle of the 1st century BCE and its end to about 10 BCE; the latest painted date recorded on the form is 13 BCE. Dressel 1C is dated from the late 2nd century BCE to the second quarter of the 1st century BCE. For the type as a whole, Sealey gives a range of about 150 to 10 BCE and places the change from 1A to 1B in the middle of the 1st century BCE.

Form

The body is tall and cylindrical and the shoulders are angular. The handles are long and straight, and oval in section. The base ends in a spike. The walls are thick. In the Elms Farm report, body sherds more than 20 mm (0.79 in) thick were assigned to the type, and one vessel had walls 32 mm (1.3 in) thick. Tyers gives a capacity of about 24 L (6.3 US gal; 5.3 imp gal).

Some vessels are stamped. Stamps are usually placed on the rim and are rare on the neck. Most carry two or three letters, though some carry more. Others show a symbol such as an anchor or a trident, and some combine letters and a symbol. Names also occur, for example Sestius. The kilns of the ager cosanus, and Albinia in particular, used letters of the alphabet as marks. Stamps on handles are less common, and where they occur they usually have two letters. These handle stamps are concentrated in the area of Cosa. They do not appear to be personal names and may have been used to record the output of individual kilns. Painted inscriptions (tituli picti) gave information about the contents of individual vessels.

Production

Dressel 1 was made along the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy, from Etruria through Latium to Campania. For Dressel 1A and 1B the main production areas were around Pompeii and Cosa and in the wine-growing districts of Caecuban and Falernian wine.. Around ten workshops had been identified by 1989, among them Albinia at the mouth of the Albegna, Cosa, three sites around the Lake of Fondi, the coastal workshops of Mondragone, Minturnae on the Garigliano, and Dugenta on the Volturno, the furthest inland. The real total was far higher; the number of Italian workshops has been estimated at about a hundred, and that figure is a minimum. Albinia was the largest exporter, supplying some 9 per cent of the Dressel 1 that reached the Gaulish sites analysed, and Cosa about 5 per cent.

Production outside Italy was limited. Dressel 1A was made in small quantities in north-eastern Spain and in France, and Dressel 1C near Gades, Carteia and Baelo in southern Baetica. Dressel 1B was made in Provence and the Rhône valley in local fabrics, but none of this provincial output appears to have been significant.

Italian Dressel 1 amphorae are usually thick-walled, with a rough sandy fabric that is light pink to light red in colour. One group has a red fabric filled with small black volcanic grains, known in British work as "black sand" and identified as green augite. This fabric is commonly attributed to the Bay of Naples, and in particular to Pompeii and Herculaneum, but analyses have shown that many Dressel 1 amphorae with this fabric were produced elsewhere. Its appearance is therefore not a reliable guide to origin.

The Falernian and Caecuban districts, though major producers, exported little to Gaul: Caecuban amphorae are effectively absent there and Falernian ones have been put at about 1 per cent of imports. Pompeian production also lost ground, falling from 13 per cent of imports around 250–200 BCE to 1 per cent by the 1st century BCE, a shift attributed to the multiplication of Italian workshops rather than to any decline at Pompeii.

Contents

Painted inscriptions show that the usual contents were wine. Named wines include Falernian and Caecuban, which were among the best known in antiquity. Chemical and archaeobotanical analysis of the pitch lining late Greco-Italic and Dressel 1A vessels from the anchorage at San Felice Circeo found tartaric, malic and pyruvic acids, together with Vitis pollen and flower tissue. These results indicate a fermented grape product.

Other contents are recorded less often. Defrutum, olives and nuts are attested. Resin, hazelnuts and spondylus shells have been found in Dressel 1B vessels, olives were found in a Dressel 1C from the Cavalière wreck, and garum has been suggested for some Dressel 1C vessels at Pompeii.

Distribution and trade

Dressel 1 is common in the western Mediterranean. All three variants are found in large numbers on the coasts of southern France, Spain and Lusitania, and smaller numbers are recorded in the eastern Mediterranean. Many wrecks carrying the type are known, particularly off Provence and Liguria. In Gaul the type is common in the Rhône and Saône valleys. It is also found, in small quantities, on 1st-century BCE sites in northern and western Gaul, and a few examples come from Augustan military sites on the Rhine and in Switzerland.

In Britain the finds form two groups, one in the south-west (Dorset and Hampshire) and one in the south-east (Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire). Dressel 1A is more common in the south-west and uncommon in the south-east. Essex has produced more Dressel 1 than any other English county. The type is almost absent further north, in Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, and this gap has been used to place the boundary between the Trinovantes and the Iceni.

The assemblage from Elms Farm at Heybridge is the largest excavated in Britain since 1945, with a minimum of 44 vessels. Three further rims from other sites at Heybridge bring the local total to 47. Most of the Elms Farm material was imported over a short period at the end of the life of the type, about 25–10 BCE. Seven early wine amphorae were found in features associated with pyres, which indicates that the wine was consumed at the settlement.