Between the Second Punic War and the Early Principate several sources of evidence indicate that the Roman economy experienced some measure of (limited) growth. The case for intensive growth is founded on two complementary approaches. The first has been to construct an “argument from convergence”, which observes that several archaeological data-sets, such as Mediterranean shipwrecks, deposits of domestic animal bones at Italian sites and samples of lead and copper pollution from Arctic ice cores and lake sediments, show an increase in chronological distribution during the Late Republic and Early Empire.1 If taken as proxies for the volume and intensity of exchange, consumption and production, respectively, then, as W. Scheidel has argued, “we may reasonably assume that [these data-sets] indicate at least the general direction of economic development”.2 A second approach has attempted to quantify the GDP of the Roman economy. Although highly conjectural, where such estimates are possible they provide an insight into the trajectory of economic development by giving a rough indication of the rate at which it was probable to have grown or contracted over a given period.3 P. Kay‘s “probabilistic quantification” of the GDP of Roman Italy for the 2nd and early 1st c. B.C.4 concludes that the economy experienced extensive and probably also intensive growth because the rate of inflation remained at a relatively low level.5 His estimate that prices rose by 95% between 150 and 50 B.C. (i.e., at a compound rate of 0.67% per annum) accords with the broadly similar conclusions reached by other scholars.6 Although Kay warns that “the estimates we have produced are assumptions, not facts”, the results are both plausible and credible from a comparative perspective.7

Studies of design principles of Roman temples typically have been based on Vitruvius, which inspired a belief that the colonnade was at the core of the geometric framework of every temple and that the lower column diameter (D) was used as a module to plan all other aspects, both horizontally and vertically. Archaeological evidence, however, shows that most extant temples do not match the Vitruvian model.1 Scholars have tried to explain the discrepancies in different ways: for example, by claiming that Vitruvius did not describe the actual state of Roman architecture but “what it should be”,2 that architects had to make “adjustments” to the “Vitruvian ideal” to create a particular effect, or that they had to make on-site corrections.3 A few studies have shown that also other design principles must have been at play. P. Barresi, based on the geometric analyses of several temple-podia of the 5th to 1st c. B.C. in central Italy, argued that they were designed and built relative to a square grid.4 He derived the size of each grid-module from the proportions of the rectangles of the temples' bases. He later reached the same conclusion for the temples of the Capitolium at Sufetula,5 while J.-N. Bonneville presented a similar theory for temples at Baelo Claudia.6 M. Wilson Jones observed that the principal parts of the façades of the Temple of Portunus at Rome and the Maison Carrée at Nîmes formed square contours,7 which he considered a reason for the “irregularities” (relative to Vitruvian principles) in the intercolumniations. He also presented other examples of simple geometric shapes in the compositions of the façades of Roman buildings.

Deep-water shipwrecks provide an opportunity to investigate ships away from the destructive dynamics of coastlines and approaches to harbors where most ancient wrecks to date have been found. Such exploration expands the potential for finding wrecks of periods for which relatively few are known. One such period is the 6th and 7th c. in the E Mediterranean. Studies of cargo assemblages from the few known wrecks of the later Roman period reveal a partial picture of interlinked and overlapping trade networks that incorporated major and minor ports in the adjacent provinces.1 Various trading modes may be discerned, including cabotage, short-haul trade, inter-regional commerce, and private long-haul trade. Largely missing thus far are the wrecks of ships that participated in the annona transport, the “backbone of Late Roman shipping”.2 Each year, an enormous fleet of private ships under state contract hauled thousands of shiploads of Egyptian grain from Alexandria to Constantinople for public distribution,3 but no shipwrecks explicitly associated with these fleets have been found. Also largely invisible are the non-commercial transports associated with the annona militaris, the fiscal supply of foodstuffs destined for armies stationed on the empire‘s borders. The state supply-system became more formalized in 536 when Justinian created the quaestura exercitus, a prefecture that was granted administrative control and jurisdiction of Moesia Secunda, Scythia, Caria, the Aegean islands, and Cyprus.4 Evidence suggests that the quaestor‘s main task was to ensure the supply, by sea, of agricultural products from the Aegean and NE Mediterranean to troops on the Danube frontier.5 While no definitive grain ships have been found in the E Mediterranean — what M. McCormick has called the “annona paradox”6 —, shipwrecks with the larger cargoes expected of state supply have remained rather elusive.

In the spectrum of the cities buried by Vesuvius, studies of humble dwellings have suffered from poor preservation, a lack of documentation and a general disinterest. Small commercial spaces frequented by non-élites, such as tabernae, thermopolia, cauponae, popinae and cenacula, remain difficult to identify as they often doubled as domestic spaces and Latin terminology does not always match the architectural remains. A few studies have focused on the place of such spaces within Roman architecture as well as on the economic rôles of tabernae and/or rental accommodations.1 This paper expands on these approaches by offering the preliminary results of research at Oplontis B (Torre Annunziata) by the Oplontis Project, one of the few sites where a series of row houses sheds light on the domestic aspects of tabernae and their rôle in urban development along the Bay of Naples.2

This paper discusses a unique artifact1 of considerable archaeological, philological and historical value, as well as its implications for our understanding of the rôle that the native inhabitants of NE Spain, especially those known as the Laeetani (Plin., NH 3.3.21), played in the major economic undertaking that the export of wine from Tarraconensis in the 1st c. B.C. was to become. To do so, we first briefly describe the typological and physical characteristics of the lead stock and interpret the double Iberian inscription, baitolo, with which it was marked, probably a place-name, either that of the Ibero-Roman town of baitolo/Baetulo, which issued coins with the same legend (baitolo) in the second quarter of the 1st c. B.C., or the name of the nearby river, the modern Besòs.2 Subsequently, we contextualize the lead stock within the corpus of Greco-Roman lead stocks to show that no other specimen, either among stocks or any instrument or component of a ship‘s naval architecture, is known to have an inscription in the Iberian language. To contextualize the artifact, we will turn our attention to the native character of baitolo‘s population, always from a linguistic perspective, and discuss its importance as a key centre in the wine trade. Thereafter, we make an epigraphic and archaeological re-assessment of the prior evidence for the participation of the indigenous peoples of NE Hispania in all the phases (whether land or maritime) of the chaîne opératoire that resulted in the production and commercialization of large amounts of wine for Narbonne and elsewhere. First, we reconsider all the Iberian inscriptions that have a maritime context or that can be related to the production and commercialization of wine. Second, we examine the archaeological evidence, especially shipwrecks, suggesting that Iberian-speaking individuals during the 1st c. B.C. owned ships and participated in trade by sea, an activity that can now be confirmed thanks to the new lead stock (fig. 1), which is of small dimensions (77 cm long, 11 cm high, 8 cm in width in the central box) and of modest weight (25.9 kg).