Keramidaria
The transport amphorae constitute a special category of vessels in ancient times, which were intended for the transportation of liquid and solid goods (mainly wine and oil, but also grains, salted fish, etc.) and therefore they form an area of archaeological research which is of particular significance for the study of trade and economy in ancient times. The sites where pottery workshops were used for the production of amphorae are of particular interest, and the researcher can confidently identify the products of local production and subsequently study their particular characteristics and their dispersion and circulation in areas of the ancient world.
On the northern coast of Samothrace, 4 km east of the ancient city of Samothrace, at the location of Keramidaria, two deposits of pottery workshops used for the production of amphorae from the Late Classical and Hellenistic periods have been located and excavated: the Western Workshop where in addition to the deposit, architectural remains of late Hellenistic facilities for the processing of ceramic materials have been located, and the Eastern Workshop, where a complex of at least three Roman-era pottery kilns has been excavated. The kilns (for firing ceramic products) have been partly constructed on top of a layer of waste from an earlier deposit of an amphorae production workshop. This belongs to ceramic material that had been discarded as "failed" (with cracks, overfired or even broken vessels) and constituted a small part of the overall production of the workshops. In most cases, it is preserved in fragmentary form (fragments from the body of amphorae) and includes approximately 2,400 stamped handles of Late Classical and Hellenistic amphorae (end of 4th - early 2nd century BC).The fragments of amphorae and the stamps on their handles from the deposits of the pottery workshops of Samothrace, create a primary material of local production, unknown to the research on amphorae in the area of the northeastern Aegean, where only the amphorae workshops of Thasos have been systematically studied and published.
The amphorae of Samothrace present typological similarities with those of Thasos, they belong to the so-called “Thasian Cycle”. Additionally, it seems that in Keramidaria a sealing system similar to that of Thasos is applied: on the shoulder of the amphora handle, a usually rectangular, but also square, circular or elliptical stamp has been imprinted before the vessel is fired where an emblem (grape, caduceus, beetle, krater, male head) and the name and/or monogram of the surname of a Famous lord appear; in Samothrace in some cases the preposition Ἐπί is used followed by the genitive of the name and the patronymic.
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