• Luxury tableware: Terra sigillata
• A closer look – making a clay lamp
• Cremation graves and burial graves
• Endidae – an important settlement on the Via Claudia Augusta
• The mansio of Neumarkt – a Roman stopping place?
    

Luxury tableware: Terra sigillata

One of the best-known examples of Roman  lustre ceramics is terra sigillata tableware, which is characterized by a lustrous, smooth, shiny red surface. The Romans used terra sigillata as tableware and serving dishes, which is why the shapes were limited to plates, platters, and bowls.
The Romans made smooth and relief terra sigillata objects. Potters turned vessels on a potter’s wheel, smoothing the outer surface with implements made of wood, bone or stone. Artisans decorated bowls with pictorial reliefs by pressing the clay into prepared moulds.
  

A closer look – making a clay lamp

Roman clay lamps were usually  made of two parts – the body and the spout. The body consisted of the oil container and the inset lid. The oil hole was located in the lid, which was often decorated. There was a wick at the end of the spout and a handle opposite the spout. Olive oil was used as fuel.
Roman potters made oil lamps out of fine clay. Most of the lamps were made from an upper and lower mould which were then fitted together. Before the lamps were fired they were given a lustre coating by dipping them in a fine clay slip.
Clay lamps with pictorial representations, like the one recovered from a woman’s grave at Neumarkt, belong to a group of figurine lamps depicting a figure on the lid. This type of lamp is particularly characteristic of the Early Roman Empire in the 1st century AD.
  

Cremation graves and burial graves

During Roman times cremation graves were prevalent in the southern Alpine valleys. The ashes of the dead were either placed in an urn or directly into a hole in the ground. The grave objects were usually burnt with the body. From the 3rd  century BC  bodies were also buried in roadside brick graves outside settlements.
In the Alpine region customs regarding grave objects changed several times during the Roman era. As in the grave field at Neumarkt, imported goods such as terra sigillata tableware, glass bottles, and clay lamps appeared soon after the Roman conquest of the region. Somewhat later locally made clasps and ceramics were again placed in the grave with the corpse according to regional traditions. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries brass knives and rings were common burial objects.
  

Endidae – an important settlement on the Via Claudia Augusta

Various buildings came to light during extensive excavations to the north of today’s market town of Neumarkt south of Bolzano. Following Roman building tradition the walls were constructed using lime mortar. These houses date from the Roman Empire between the 1st and 3rd century AD. The remains of a Roman road were discovered nearby, which was apparently a section of the Via Claudia Augusta. The trunk road linked Hostilia/Ostiglia in northern Italy with the Roman provincial capital of Augusta Vindelicum, modern-day Augsburg in southern Germany. Numerous burial sites were also found along the Neumarkt route. Building ruins and graves suggest a large Roman settlement. It may have been the stopping place known as Endidae, which is said to have been situated 23 miles north of Trento. Information to this effect can be found in the Itinerarium Antonini, a list of the most important Roman roads.
  

The mansio of Neumarkt – a Roman stopping place?

There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that the building excavated in Neumarkt was a Roman stopping place. The building is situated next to the Roman trunk road Via Claudia Augusta. The construction methods are similar to those of other stopping places. This is where travellers could rest, change horses, and buy provisions.
The mansio consists of a colonnade laid out in an easterly direction and an inner courtyard with eight rooms leading off it. The thick foundations and the probable remains of a wooden stairway suggest a two-storey house. It was destroyed by an earthquake in the 3rd century.