Late republican transport amphorae of the Tiber Valley (Rieti – Italy): Preliminary study on their composition and archaeometrical characterization

This paper focuses attention on the archaeometrical analyses carried out on the late republican amphorae kept in the Civic Archaeological Museum of Magliano Sabina (Rieti). The amphorae remains, which were found by chance in the 1970s in the rural settlements of Colle Rosetta and San Sebastiano located in the Sabina Tiberina near the River Tiber, belong to the ceramic classes of the Ancient Graeco-Italic Amphorae (V-V/VI types) with a “spinning top” like body and triangular shaped rim of the van der Mersch classification groups – i.e. Lyding Will A1 and B types – and of the Dressel 1 Amphorae. Chronologically, they range from the beginning of the 3rd century to the first half of the 1st century B.C. A scientific multi-methodological approach was used in this research in order to shed light on the tipology and the composition of the ceramics for their characterization; i.e. minero-petrografic, diffractometric and chemical analyses were carried out on the ceramic samples.