Late Roman amphorae from the harbor of Panticapaion (Bosporus)
Anna Smokotina
Recent underwater excavations for the Crimean bridge highway project (2015-2017) revealed a new ceramic cluster which had been moved towards the Ak-Burun cape obviously as a result of the Kerch (Pantikapaion) harbor’s dredging in the 1970s. The most numerous finds are dated to the Hellenistic period while only 203 fragments of the Late Roman amphorae were found there. The imported finds mostly of the first half of the 6th century predominate among all Late Roman amphorae. The amphorae of Antonova 5 (75 frs.) and LR 1 (64 frs.) (all identified profile sherds belong to the LR 1B variant) make up about 68,4%. Sinopean amphorae C Snp I/Zeest 100 also account for a considerable share of the finds (32 frs., about 15,8 %). Other amphorae types (LR 2, LR 3, TRC 4, TRC 6, Vnukov С IVF, C IVE and Ch ID) are represented by only isolated finds. It is important to note that around 55,2% of the LR amphorae preserved traces of a resin lining on the interior.