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All along the Roman Empire, Baetica was known to have exported huge quantities of oil to Rome from the age of Augustus onwards in the Dressel 20 amphora. The inscriptions written on these amphorae varied across time, according to the way that the distribution was organised and financed. For many years, these inscriptions were only considered under the focus of the Roman government, diminishing the importance of private subjects in distribution, and ignoring the role of the locationes or contracts by which these goods were collected and distributed. The aims of these agreements were to keep imperial involvement in these ventures but entrusting much of the work to private entrepreneurs or contractors. The inscriptions of products addressed to public supply reveal a large network, which ensured that the tasks agreed for gathering and shipping the goods were performed through a well-organised administrative machinery. Thus, the study of Dressel 20's epigraphy reveals economic phenomena taking place in particular moments of the Empire and help us understand the management of their distribution and the logic of the operations lying behind their inscriptions.

nostrum and its social and political significance for the Roman world ' (p. 143). Minale's chapter focuses on one fragment preserved in Justinian's Digest and later legislative compilations related to the plundering of sailing vessels after they had been shipwrecked. Minale uses this law fragment to reiterate the importance of the traditional Rhodian sea laws in all maritime matters. He explores the transmission and transformation of this fragmentand the Rhodian sea law in generalin the Roman and later Byzantine worlds. Like Mataix Ferrándiz, he demonstrates that the Romans (and Byzantines) identified with past views of the sea contained in the legislative tradition, but that they also adapted the legislation to reflect the contemporary socio-political landscape and ideas of imperial authority.There are several black-and-white illustrations and maps throughout the book. The pictures accompanying the chapters by Töyräänvuori and Grigorieva illustrate their iconographic points well, and the photographs, maps and diagrams in the Indgjerd and Forsyth chapters are very informative. However, the quality of some of the illustrations and maps is not ideal, and this makes their content a little unclear. For example, it is difficult to distinguish between the colours of the different areas identified in the legend of the second uncaptioned map at the start of the volume. There are also several typographical errors throughout the book. These minor criticisms do not, however, detract from the overall quality of the volume, which has much to offer historians and archaeologists. It is a collection of fresh and innovative studies of seafaring, mobility and connectivity in the late antique Mediterranean world.

Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.comeditorial matter and organisation Peter Candy and Emilia Mataix Ferrándiz, 2022 © the chapters their several authors, 2022 Cover image: wall painting of a ship with a square sail crossing the harbour of a port, in the House with Nymphaeum, Pompeii (VIII.2.28). Now in Naples Archaeological Museum. Inventory number 9460. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Cover design: www.hayesdesign.co.uk Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun -Holyrood Road 12(2f) Jackson's Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 10/12 Goudy Old Style by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

Waterways have been key factors in the development of societies from prehistoric times, particularly due to their role as vectors for cultural interactions, material exchange, and transmission of knowledge. The fluidity of these highways of transport and communications is tightly linked to the presence of transit points: spaces with unique geographical characteristics that acted as nodal points between different communities. Transit points are thus defined as places of intense social contacts, putting objects of physical geography into the domain of social sciences and humanities.The subject is challenging, as activities that happen in aquatic spaces seldom leave substantial archaeological traces behind. Nevertheless, by focusing on the intersection between humans and their environment down by the water, this book demonstrates what can be achieved by changing the research paradigm to one that fully embraces the nuances of the aquatic world, and especially the intricate connection between society and waterscapes