Monte Testaccio
The Monte Testaccio is a hill in Rome , the completely broken there. Its name is derived from testae , the Latin expression for broken glass. These come from broken ancient amphorae and other vessels that were used to transport grain , oil and wine across the Tiber to ancient Rome .
The hill was used as a dump until the end of the 4th century AD . Today it is overgrown by grass and trees. Archaeologists have calculated that the fragment stratifications reach a depth of around 45 meters. The circumference of Monte Testaccio is around 1,000 meters.
The oldest vessels were mainly used for olive oil , especially from Baetica . Because the manufacturer's seal and other designations can often still be deciphered, they can be used as a rich source of information about the Roman economy of the respective time. The hill is now estimated at 53 million amphorae, most of which are of the type known as the Dressel 20 . Such an amphora contained 70 liters.
The hill gives its name to the Testaccio district in Rome.
literature
- L. & R. Adkins: An Introduction to the Romans Chartwell , 1993, ISBN 0785816097 .
- Rodríguez J. Remesal: Monte Testaccio (Rome, Italy). In: C. Smith (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Global Archeology. Springer, Cham 2019, doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-319-51726-1_3331-1 .
Web links
- Exhibition on the Monte Testaccio of the Universities of Rome and Barcelona (English)
- Review forum for research literature in sehepunkte , Vol. 7, No. 1, 2007
- Amphorae ex Hispania (English)
Coordinates: 41 ° 52 ′ 34 ″ N , 12 ° 28 ′ 30 ″ E