Senj – Štela: connectivity and consumption of the Roman city through pottery evidence

Networking and the exchange of goods were the basis of the Roman Empire’s economy, driven by the Mediterranean trade and the proverbial significant agricultural activities. This trade was made possible by the creation of a single political control over the Empire, which resulted in a single, or at least integrated, monetary economy, a single legal framework, and widespread government investments in transport infrastructure (Wilson, A., Bowman, A. 2018, 2–6). Archaeological sources essential to understanding the scope of ancient trade come from identifying wares and goods that circulated in the territory of the Roman state (Tchernia, A. 2016, 79–81), increasingly intensively from the last centuries BC until deep into Late Antiquity (Wilson, A., Bowman, A. 2018, 5; Cirelli, E. 2017).

In addition to the objective reasons and consequences of such networking, it also enabled the creation of unique (albeit regional) markets, as well as tastes, by introducing new foods or products from specific regions (e.g., Komar, P. 2020, 285), often to the detriment of local production, thus creating a globalized society and additionally favoring exchange. How the eastern Adriatic participated in that trade, primarily as a consumer, can also be reconstructed based on archaeological deposits, but their published status is quite scarce for now. This especially applies to land sites, while underwater ones – ports, and especially shipwrecks (for comprehensive reviews, see Jurišić, M. 2000; Pešić, 2019, both with earlier literature) provide some insight.

The lack of data (particularly visible on the distribution maps of certain ceramic types) is especially noticeable in the area of the northern Adriatic, Kvarner, and the Croatian littoral – ancient northern (later Tarsatic) Liburnia. In this context, the research on the Roman complex at the Štela site in Senj, carried out in 1995 by the City Museum of Senj under the leadership of Ante Glavičić, is particularly significant. Archaeological excavations at Štela had a rescue purpose. However, due to the misunderstanding with the investors, it was impossible to carry out the research according to the rules of the archaeological excavation methodology, and the works, at the time, were reduced to documenting individual structures and collecting portable material without a broader analysis and documentation of the context. On that occasion, a considerable amount of portable material was collected, among which ceramic materials were the dominant category. Their typo-chronological classification, analysis, and interpretation are the subject of this book. Although the site was not strati- graphically excavated, the analysis of the ceramics enabled its placement in a typological-chronological context. In addition, if we view the context as significant for ancient Senia (which it certainly is, given its scope and typological diversity), the data we obtained from it goes beyond a typological-chronological interpretation and provides us with valuable information about trade relations, especially imports, which this ancient center realized within the wider Adriatic, the Mediterranean area and with the immediate interior. Namely, only a tiny corpus of ceramic finds from Senj itself has ever been published (Fadić, I. 1988; 1999; Starac, 1999). Considering that other published closed contexts (or contexts with a slightly more significant amount of material) from the Kvarner are rare, the corpus from Štela is all the more valuable for the study of ceramic finds from this area, especially if we take into account the importance of Senia as a port and communication intersection of land and maritime networks (Glavaš, V. 2010).