This study of an important class of ceramics from the key coastal colonial site of Cosa in southwest Tuscany documents the rise of Republican Rome to dominance in central Italy in the third and second centuries BC. Excavation and survey work by the American Academy in Rome and others at Cosa over the past half-century have greatly enriched our knowledge of the organization and exploitation of the resources of the countryside, and the patterns of economic exchange to which they testify. These latter are particularly evident in the varieties of imported and locally made black-glaze pottery that have been recovered in the excavations.
Ann Reynolds Scott catalogues and analyzes five unpublished deposits of black-glaze pottery from Cosa. Her analysis includes comparative material from other sites and typological distribution charts of the various productions. She also reevaluates the deposits of pottery from the site that were previously published. Abundant evidence from Cosa and its territory and from north-central and south Italy also allows the author to put previously published black-glaze pottery from Cosa into its proper context and, with the new evidence, to consider the changing economic fortunes of the town after Italy had been re-secured from Hannibal for Rome. The book gives a general overview of the classes of black-glaze pottery and the present state of black-glaze pottery research in Italy. It will be a prime research tool for scholars working on ancient ceramics of this class and for historians of Republican Rome.
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