Getting wine to non-Roman Scotland – material from The Gegan, East Lothian - Colin Wallace

The lives of amphoras, getting wine to non-Roman Scotland and Roman pottery for drinking – the material from The Gegan, East Lothian - Colin Wallace

Study Group for Roman Pottery 2025 Conference – Gloucester (UK) 6th-8th June 2025, @ The Folk of Gloucester & Museum of Gloucester

Sunday 8th June

A coastal site in South-Eastern Scotland, The Gegan near North Berwick in East Lothian, produced amongst other things the rim and neck, with the stumps of the handles, and the separate
upper body of a Dressel 20 amphora in the early 1870s and then in 2019 during new work by the University of Aberdeen’s Comparative Kingship project, a bodysherd of a South Gaulish wine amphora. Post-excavation is in progress, but in some early thoughts about the challenges to interpretation, I want to say something about re-purposing, picking up on the possible occurrence of briquetage on the site as well as an idea of Elaine Morris’ about the possible re-use of Dressel 20 amphoras elsewhere as containers to bring brine up to a settlement-site for processing. Then, generalising from a fragment to an original vessel, there is the getting of amphora-borne commodities to Roman Scotland, where more has been said about olive-oil (from the abundant Dressel 20s) but correspondingly less about wine. Finally, glass vessels, metal vessels and even samian bowls have figured prominently in recent discussions of alcohol and power in Roman Iron Age Scotland, but not so much other pottery evidence, whether for import (cf The Gegan) or consumption. There were quite a lot of flagons at the major regional power-centre on Traprain Law, as Louisa Campbell reminded us …