Shipwreck cargoes in the Balearic Islands: the Hellenistic reliefware as indicator of maritime trades in the Western Mediterranean

Abstract

The wreck of St. Jordi (near the island of Majorca in the Balearic Islands) documents in the hold the presence of a bowl signed by thepotter Lapius, active in central Italy in the II century BC. The wreck of St Jordi, left from a port of the Ionian (Pergamo, Rhodes?),can have stopped in the port of Ostia, depositing rhodian wine amphorae and loading black gloss ware, and other materials, inaddition to Italo - Megarian ware, directed to the Iberian Peninsula. In his cabotage, the ship should have coasted the BalearicIslands, and then from Ebusus (Ibiza) to the port of Cartagena in which to download the content of the cargo hold. But the journey ofthe ship has been arrested in front of Majorca after a terrible storm that has wrecked the ship with its cargo before being able to arrivein the harbor. Another maritime itinerary could have been from the emporion of Delos with a stop in a port of Apulian, through thestrait of Messina, and then to reach the port of Ostia, from where to leave again crossing the channel north Sardinian near the Spargiisland and then to head towards the Balearic Islands, transporting, among other goods, Hellenistic relief ware of Ephesian production(from the Monogram workshop), as prove the megarian ware found in the Cales Coves in Menorca and the four bowls in the gravesof the necropolis of Puig des Molins in Ibiza.