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Article source: "The Amber Route in the Times of the Roman Empire" Amberif Preview 2008. Pgs 14-16.
The Amber Route in the Times of the Roman Empire
by Marcin Staporek
The Amber Route, which in ancient times linked Italy through the lands lying by the River Danube with the coast of the Gulf of Gdansk, is one of the most intriguing phenomena in the history of Central Europe.
The ancient peoples of the Mediterranean: the Phoenicians, Greeks and Etruscans knew amber (succinite) many centuries before the birth of Christ. In this early period raw amber would come from the North Sea coast, including jutland, and be transported south via a trial up the River Elbe. Sometime in the middle of the 1st millenium BCE, a several-century hiatus in the inflow of succinite to the south took place.
After this interval, amber again began to reach Italy in the 1st century BCE. this time it was raw amber from the baltic Sea, gathered on the beaches of the Vistula and Curonian Spits or mined in the Sambian Peninsula. It was taken south most likely by the Celtic tribes then living in what is now Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Little Poland. Celtic merchants reached the area of the present-day Gdansk-Gdynia metropolitan area, as other parts of the amber-bearing coast were less accessible at the time due to the ongoing development of the Vistula River Delta. From what is now Pszczolki in the south, the Oksywie and Rumia in the north, there was a dense network of settlements whose focal point was a population center in the area of today's Pruszcz Gdanski, near the mouth of the River Radunia at a long-gone lagoon lake. The volume of the trade that went on at the time can be inferred from the amount of amber found in the Celt-controlled territories, e.g. an enormous store of raw amber kept in the caves in Wroclaw's Partnice district of the considerable amount of manufacturing waste and semi-finished goods found in the oppidum ( a kind of proto-urban Celtic fort) in Stare Hradisko in Moravia. In the time sof Julius Caesar, Octavian Augustus and Tiberus, ancient Rome conquered almos of western and southern Europe, putting and end to the independence of the Celtic tribes.
The Empire's borders stabilized in the 1st and 2nd centuries on the Rhine and the Danube. The peoples who remained outside these borders, though disdainfully called "barbarians", still intrigues the Romans. Roman merchants would travel through the Barbaricum looking for diverse products and materials. It is no wonder then, that they also became interested in the "Gold of the North". This is how the contacts between ancient Rome and the coasts of the Gulf of Gdansk were established. The most important pieces of information on the history of the Amber Route were recorded by Pliny the Elder (ca. 23-79 CE) in his Naturalis Historia. He knew that amber came from the coasts of the Northern Ocean (i.e. the Baltic and North Seas) and that the inhabitants of Barbaricum took it to the Roman province of Pannonia. the north-Italic Veneti tribe, whose territory neighbored Pannonia, helped to popularize amber among the people of the Italian Peninsula. Pliny gave the location of the amber-bearing coast, which was to lie 600 Roman miles (889km) from the town of Carnuntum, located on the River Danube at the border between Pannonia and the lands of Barbaricum. therefore, we can infer that in Plyny's time it was in Carnuntum that the Amber Route left the territory of the Roman provinces and entered Barbaricum. The reliability of Pliny's record is heightened by his referring to a journey of a certain equestrian ( a Roman citizen of noble rank), who during the reign of Nero went north to bring a large amount of amber to the capital. The key information here is that the Roman visited trading places ( commercial) and the shores of the Baltic Sea.
Pliny's account is supplemented with a reference by Tacitus (ca. 55 - ca.120), who in his Germania wrote that the Esti ( who then inhabited the Sambian Peninsula) " are the only people who collect amber in the shallows or even on the beach" to later sell it off to merchants in its raw form "and are astounded at the price it fetches."
On the basis of the date from these and other sources we can recreate the road that Baltic amber took from its source to the Roman customer in the 1st century CE. The raw amber was gathered by the Esti, who sold it to merchants from other barbarian tribes. Initially these transactions certainly took place in the lands of the Esti, but later perhaps the Esti themselves brough the succinite to the "trading places" (commercia), in the territories of their neighbors. Archaeological finds allow us to assume that such market places operated in the areas of Pruszcz Gdanski Malbork and Elblag. The merchants would then travel south with their merchandise. they probably used inland waterways as much as they could, because Barbaricum had no cart-worthy roads to speak of at the time. Only on local stretches were you able to find infrastructure such as the wooden and earthen "bridges" discovered near Bagart which helped travelers negotiate the Swampy Dzierzgon River Valley. Since it was the ox, not the horse, that was the primary beast of burden in ancient times, waterway transport was much more efficient than land transport, even given the modest size of the vessels of the times.
We are unable to indicate the exact route via which amber was transported to the limes of the Imperium Romanum; we can, however, determine its approximate direction: first up the Vistula, then via the Kujawy region and the vicinity of Kalisz in the direction of the upper Oder, then through the Moravian Gate and down the River Morava to the Danube. In Carnuntum, a town on the right bank of the Danube by a Roman military fort, barbarian merchants would sell the amber to their counterparts from the Roman provinces. In Carnuntum, it was possible to lead the amber onto carts and take it on the excellently paved roads (often built by Roman soldiers) through Pannonia in the direction of the Alpine passes. The stations of this road included Scarbantia (today Sopron) and Savaria (today Szombatheley) in what is now Hungary; with Poetovio (Ptuj) and Emona (Ljubljana) in today's Slovenia. After leaving Emona, the road rose to the Piro Pass in the Julian Alps (now Hrusica, 867 m a.s.l.), and from there descended to the lowland on the northern Adriatic coast: the old lands of the Veneti people.
In antiquity, Aquileia was the largest town in this part of Italy. Established by the Adriatic in 181 BCE, it was an important tranportation crossroads and also a starting point for Roman political and economic expansion in the direction of the eastern Alpine lands. Aquileia's specialty were numerous craft workshops. Many of them produced luxury goods. The city would attract manufacturers from central Italy, and probably also from eastern Mediterranean lands, who specialized in semi-precious stones known as gemmarii. The presence of eastern Mediterranean craftsmen can be inferred from common "Alexandrian" motifs, such as the ibis in the rushes. Towards the end of the 1st century CE, the community mastered amber-sculpting techniques. Succinite, which was brought to Aquileia raw from the Baltic coast, would then go to the craftsmen. The smallest nuggets were made into beads. Amber bed necklaces were worn especially in North-Eastern Italy, in the territories lying behind the River Po. The local peasant women attributed medicinal properties to these necklaces, as they were supposed to Prevent tonsillitis and sore throat. A range of other items made in Aquileia was discovered while researching the graves of Roman women. Just as the Phoenicians, Etruscans and greeks before them, Roman customers were most fond of transparent amber. Especially valuable was a colour variety that Pliny described as the colour of Falernian wine; however, when there was a shortage of transparent amber, cloudy or opaque nuggets would also be used.
The extant goods include jewellery (necklaces, rings, pendant) and coffers to hold it, toiletries and everyday objects: knife and mirror handles and boxes for cosmetics. The vessels often have Dionysian motifs and scenes. Also popular were small figurines or figurine groups, with the most common motif of children at play in various scenes (the putti or winged cupids). Pliny claims with a bit of a sneer that sometimes an amber figurine of a human would sell at a higher price than an adult slave. The aquileian workshops also produced miniature "still lifes": an entire range of small objects such as leaves, shells, fish, loaves of bread and especially fruit, e.g. pomegranates, figs, dates, grapes (the symbol of fertility and abundance, but also of life after death - sometimes placed on a a grape of laurel leaves). Some of these motifs had to do with protective magic, others also served as New Year's gifts, as indicated by the letters ANNFF (ANnum Novum Faustum) etched in amber acorns and leaves. It is also on record that Roman ladies liked to have small amber figurines or even raw amber nuggets at hand, just to enjoy their pleasant feel.
Another intriguing group of archaeological finds is made up of amber distaffs [spinning tools] (sometimes mistakenly described as "scepters") made of a metal (bronze) rod with strings of amber beads wound on it. Spinning used to be one of women's basic household chores and amber was an especially good material to manufacture spinning tools, as thanks to its electrostatic properties it attracted the fibers: raw wool, flax or hemp which served as athe spinning material. As a distinctive women's attribute, a distaff with the fibers would be quite often placed in their graves. Amber distaff finds are concentrated in the vicinity of the Amber Route (in and around Aquileia, in today's Slovenia or in the Scarbantia area), but also in the Rhine Valley provinces. Interestingly enough, sometimes the amber distaffs made in Italy would be exported north to the region from which the raw material used for their production originated, as confirmed by finds in Pomerania and northern Great Poland.
We have the least information about amber luxury products, such as skillfully crafted tableware for wealthy Romans. Amber was also used to create completely unique objects. The Greek writer Pausanias (ca. 115- after 180) in his Description of Greece mentions an amber portrait of the Emperor Augustus in Olympia, one of the most important sanctuaries of ancient Greece. Surely, this must have been a work of art of the highest order.
The journey of the roman equestrian during Nero's reign, described by Pliny, and the games which were held after the nobleman's return when the entire amphitheatre was adorned with amber, probably began the fashion for amber amound the Romans. We can assume that this lead to more dynamic trade contacts and perhaps Roman merchants themselves arrived - along their barbarian counterparts - at the amber marketplaces on the Gulf of Gdansk. Unfortunately, ancient historians have nothing to say about this stage of the development of the Amber Route and researchers are forced to speculate, supported only by the analysis of archeological finds. We know that amber was imported to the Roman Empire throughout the 2nd and the greater part of the 3rd century. Later the intensity of contacts diminished, which was caused by a political and economic crisis in the Empire, political shifts in the Barbaricum, as well as the evolving tastes of Roman customers and the decline in the fashion of amber. However, the Amber Route did not die out completely and archaeological finds from Hungary prove that in the 4th century Baltic amber still found customers among the Roman population of Pannonia and the barbarian Sarmatians, who neighbored it in the east. These contacts were brought to an end only with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the concurrent political, cultural and ethnic changes in the lands of the Baltic coast.
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