Graham Taylor

What do you want a pointed vessel for?

That's crazy.

They're pointed because their main function is to go into a ship.

They are vessels for carrying liquid products, mostly wine, olive oil, fish sauce.

But they also ship things like sort of dates and figs and things packed in honey.

And they're there to be shipped in an ancient Roman or Greek ship.

And the hull of that ship is, you know, hull-shaped.

It's sort of V-shaped.

there would be little in the way of flat surfaces.

And even if there were, this ship is going to be rolling around.

So what you need is something that allows you to fix those things into place.

And when you've got the timbers of the ship and other lats of wood nailed across those, you can leave gaps into which the pegs of the amphora go.

And the amphora are then stabilized and you

tie across all the tops with rope.

And there have been finds, I think, in the Mediterranean of ships where there is evidence still of weaving of rope or pieces of wood or whatever through the handles, and you ship them.

But there are other reasons.

From a potter's point of view, when you fire huge pots with big flat bottoms to them in what is an updraft kiln, now in a Roman or Greek kiln,

The fire is at the bottom of the kiln.

And then at the top, you close it off because you normally pack in from the top of the top of the kiln.

So the fire's at the bottom.