L.Q.S.: an amphora stamp from St Helena School in Colchester

Today (15th January), Trust pottery specialist Steve Benfield was studying the Roman pottery fragments which we retrieved during our watching brief at St Helena School in Colchester in 2014, to write his report on the pottery. The fragments of pottery from the watching brief include a group which represent a Roman amphora of a type which is called a ‘Dressel 20’. One of these fragments is large and includes part of the rim and one of the two handles of the amphora, and with a stamp on the handle.

The amphora would have contained olive oil and it was imported to Roman Colchester from southern Spain. Over 70 kiln sites for Dressel 20 amphoras have been identified along the River Guadalquivir (see Roman Spain, by S J Keay, 1988). Olive oil was a staple product in the Roman empire, used for cooking, as a medication and in lamps. Olive-oil production was a major industry in Roman Spain. The Dressel 20 amphora was a large, heavy, globular pottery vessel used for the transportation and storage of olive oil: other types of amphora were used to import other consumables such as wine and olives. The stamp on our amphora reads L.Q.S. – this is a known name stamp, although the name which the letters represent is not known: however, it would have been the name of the owner of an olive oil-producing estate. Two ‘LQS’ stamps have been found at Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall and, apparently, they originate from Alcolea del Río in southern Spain: they have been dated to AD 150-175/200 (‘Vindolanda’s amphora stamps 2007-2012’, by K Sheehan-Finn, 2012).

We have excavated two previous examples of the stamp, on our Middleborough and Balkerne Lane sites in the 1970s. The stamp from our Middleborough site was on a Dressel 20 amphora which was from a context dated to about AD 250-300 (see profile below). Dressel 20 amphoras were imported into Britain in large numbers, and they are very common in Britain – in fact, they are the most common amphora found in Britain, and also in Colchester! Stamps on amphoras are less common. Steve says that the conjunction of this stamp with part of the rim will provide a more precise date for the vessel and its typology, which makes this amphora more interesting in archaeological terms.

Coincidentally, Trust archaeologist Emma Holloway was at St Helena School on Wednesday to talk to pupils about the archaeological evidence which we have excavated there. St Helena School is built on the site of a large Roman temple dedicated to Jupiter and founded in the late 1st/early 2nd century: this also lies in an area which includes the sites of a cluster of Roman temples. You can read previous blog posts about the archaeology of St Helena School on this web-site and all our fieldwork reports online at http://cat.essex.ac.uk . Read more about amphoras in Colchester Archaeological Report 10: Roman pottery from excavations in Colchester, 1971-86 (1999).

The images show Steve holding the large fragment of the amphora in the Trust’s processing room here at Roman Circus House today, and two views of the stamp.

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