Background: Elaiussa was a major node in Mediterranean ceramic exchange networks already by the 1st c. (Ferrazzoli and Ricci 2009). Ceramic material, wasters, and actual kilns show that the city’s workshops were primarily used to produce the Late Roman 1 type amphoras, oil-lamps, lanterns, carved decorated pottery, and unguentaria, all sharing the same clay/fabrics. The six known kilns/workshops are located in close proximity to the basin and/or the facilities of the southern harbor of the city, and were active in different periods, for the greatest part overlapping, proving the quite considerable extent of the local production.
Number of kilns/workshops: 6
Typology: LRA1 Type A (Ferrazzoli and Ricci 2007), Type B, and Type C.
Local Fabric: Hard, sandy fabric varying from light yellow (7.5YR 8/2–4) to red (5YR 7/6) with limestone inclusions and a rough surface
Distribution: Based on preliminary petrographic investigations, Itanos and Pseira (Crete); Tarraco (Spain); Cibalae (Croatia); and Nea Paphos (Cyprus).
Kiln #01:
Location: western end of the southern harbor
Period of activity: Unknown
Description of the facilities: the kiln is located at the western end of the southern harbor (mentioned in Burragato et al. 2007), by the mouth of the seasonal stream of the Paşa Deresi. It is mostly unpublished, and was identified in 2003 during construction works on the coastal road (cf. Borgia and Iacomi 2010: 1034 n.9).
Kiln #02:
Location: northwestern necropolis
Period of activity: beginning of the 5th to the mid-7th c.
Description of the facilities: Brief notes on this kiln are given in Morselli and Ricci (2009: 103), and Ferrazzoli and Ricci (2010: 815-816). The northwestern necropolis seems to have been dismissed by the end of the 4th c., when a series of productive facilities (most notably, an installation interpreted as an olive oil press) were created along the hillside once accommodating the tombs. The kiln itself, built in bricks and rectangular in plan, apparently conforms to the type of kiln #06 and preserved part of the arched covering of the combustion chamber, built out of bricks. It is said to have been installed on an earlier one, but it was anyway built after the olive oil facility went out of use.
Kiln #03:
Location: area of the Byzantine Palace - northwestern end
Period of activity: mid-6th-mid.7th c.
Description of the facilities: Located just outside the Palace walls and close to the southern harbor basin, the kiln was later replaced by #04 nearby, as they were seemingly part of the same atelier (Iacomi and Cassiani 2016; cp. notes in Borgia and Iacomi 2010: 1034, and in Iacomi 2020).
Kiln #04:
Location: area of the Byzantine Palace - by the polygonal wall
Period of activity: 7th c.
Description of the facilities: Built in stone and bricks exploiting a preexisting polygonal wall, the kiln is basically unpublished (Iacomi and Cassiani 2016).
Kiln #05:
Location: eastern front of the southern harbor
Period of activity: 5th to late 6th-early 7th c.
Description of the facilities: Located along the southern harbor front, in an area still not thoroughly investigated, the structure remains basically unpublished (Iacomi and Cassiani 2016).
Kiln #06:
Location: residential sector by the southern harbor
Period of activity: late 4th - second third of the 7th c.
Description of the facilities: Workshop in the lowermost terrace of the domestic block investigated 2005-2016 by V. Iacomi and others (Missione Archeologica Italiana a Elaiussa Sebaste, Sapienza University of Rome; see the detailed description of the complex in Borgia and Iacomi 2010). Just outside the limits of the southern harbor basin, a large portion of a pre-existing terracing, formerly used for domestic purposes, was arranged to accommodate the workshop at least by the end of the 4th c. (cp. Iacomi 2020: 83). It includes a large kiln for amphora production and a smaller kiln (maybe for lamp production?). The large kiln (unit Ia) is enclosed by pre-existing walls, covering an 8 x 5m area. Two series of eight short pillars built in bricks are preserved, in some cases to the arch spring; these were meant to support the arches on top of which there was the "slab" of the firing chamber. Compacted clay forms two massive jutting antae on the front, marking the inverted-V shaped entrance. A sondage on the floor of the combustion chamber showed that both the floor itself and the pillars were periodically raised in new "construction" phases (at least four were identified for the floor only).
In the rest of the terrace, pre-existing rooms were used as related facilities. In a unit adjoining the kiln (If) the settling and then storage of clay was taking place; here an underground rock-cut cistern must have been exploited for the process as well. Later, the cistern was used to dispose of misfired vessels, thence the large deposit (in two different and separate heaps), almost exclusively made of LRA1 (about 800) uncovered here. The crafting must have happened in one of the northern units (Ic), next to which a large room (Id) might have been worked as storage for the different materials entering (firing wood among the others) and exiting (the crafted and fired amphoras) the workshop. The connection to docking or mooring station(s) along the shore is still unclear, but it seems that the amphoras (already filled with their content?) were brought outside and towards the sea through narrow passages.
The capacity of this kiln has been calculated in a possible load up to 250 or 500 amphorae per firing process. The workshop fell out of use together with the final abandonment of the whole domestic block investigated so far; the kiln was filled with its (last) firing load when it collapsed; the event must have occurred around 630-660 CE. (Borgia - Iacomi 2010; a full report of the 2005-2016 excavations in the sector is in preparation by V. Iacomi and A. Kizilarsanoglu).
