The Central Adriatic Wine Trade of Italy Revisited

Since Maria Teresa Cipriano's and Marie-Brigitte Carre's seminal 1989 paper Production et typologie des amphores sur la cote adriatique de l'Italie' in the volume Amphores romaines et histoire economique', our knowledge of Adriatic Italian wine amphorae has much improved. Most of these new data', however, remain poorly known among the wider scholarly community and no real update regarding their production loci and distribution patterns has as yet been attempted. This paper fills the void for the central part of the eastern coastline between Rimini and Pescara and reviews the latest evidence regarding the manufacture and circulation of these amphorae. In the process, the central Adriatic area of Italy emerges as a key player in the Late Republican and Early Imperial wine trade. This reassessment provides a new starting point for the diachronic exploration of the Adriatic wine commerce between c.250BC and AD 150.