Ricerc@Sapienza

This paper focuses on the imports in Rome and its hinterland of transport amphorae from northern Africa and/or we- stern Sicily in the period between the Republican and Augustan age. It is an ongoing research, based on the one hand on bibliography and on the other on the preliminary analysis of some contexts still under study. The documentation is poor from the 5th to 3rd centuries BCE, while a first increase of imports is recorded at the end of the 3rd/beginning of the 2nd century BCE. It is however only with the 1th century BCE that, thanks to the presence of contexts rich of pottery, it was possible to carry out not only typological, but also quantitative considerations. Lastly the Augustan age marks an important moment of transition: within this period stratigraphies, in fact, are recorded the latest imports of Punic tradition amphorae and the final transition to the morphological tradition of the Roman world.