Archaeology as a Productive Practice: Models and Results from Legacy Data Analysis at Oplontis Villa B (Torre Annunziata, Italy) (20 min)

Presenters

Jennifer L. Muslin, Loyola University Chicago

Abstract

Archaeological excavation is both a destructive and generative process: As strata are removed, they produce artifacts and records of their contents and characteristics. Analysis of this data can be an overwhelming, time-consuming task, often undertaken only partially and long after the excavation itself has finished; that creates a gap of knowledge between the people who generated the data and the people charged with ordering, analyzing, and interpreting it. Despite these challenges, such legacy data analysis is a productive, vital part of understanding a site’s history, allowing one to question and reevaluate long-standing assumptions about its formation and interpretation.

Using two unsorted piles of ceramic and organic material from the first century C.E. Roman amphora packaging center of Oplontis Villa B as a case study, this paper offers some perspectives and models for successfully processing and utilizing legacy data in archaeological analysis. Excavations in 1974–1975 largely destroyed the architecture and contexts in the center’s south side upper floor rooms and Room 1, but at the same time produced considerable amounts of pottery and building material that remained largely uncatalogued. In 1991, workers further displaced these finds, putting them in piles in a different area to look for sherds with epigraphy and attempt to reconstruct vessels broken during digging, removing and inventorying them. Everything else was left in the piles, until I began processing it in 2017 and 2023. The selective nature of the original collection process skewed the number and representation of amphora types recorded in the room, which in turn led to interpretations, based on incomplete evidence, that Room 1 was a grand cru for imported wines. My analysis complicates this hypothesis, demonstrating that there were more and varied amphora forms in Room 1, and reconstructs evidence for the upper floor rooms that was presumed to be lost during excavation.