Phasing out LRA 7 amphorae in favor of new wine containers: Preliminary remarks based on finds from excavations in Naqlun

Clay pots were in antiquity the most popular kind of transport container for liquid goods (wine, olive oil etc.). In Egypt, the commonly used traditional amphoras were supplemented in the Islamic period by mostly unhandled bag-shaped bottles, which until recently did not seem to have been particularly frequent in the archaeological record. Meanwhile, excavations in Fustat and Naqlun produced quite a sizable assemblage of this kind of vessels. The paper presents a tentative typology of these containers and a provisional determination of the liquid goods transported in them. The author hypothesizes on the reasons behind the spectacular career of the bottle apparently inspired by vessels of the LRA 5/6 type, which totally replaced the traditional LRA 7 amphora within just a hundred or two hundred years. The most important factor in this process of change may have involved practical considerations (including economical ones).