in turkey we imported shipping containers solely to use them as
superior, securable, weather-proof storage housing for finds from the
troy excavations - they were never actually used to ship anything. one
suspects something similar in afghanistan. so re-use is not always the
correct interpretation. similarly, bronze age populations in parts of
turkey could be buried in large storage vessels called pithoi, which
were the shipping containers of their day. studies have shown that most
of these were not re-used, but purpose built for burial. typologically
based on shape and wear the pithoi used for shipping and/or
purpose-built for burial are indisinguishable.

thus on lesser evidence the re-use of shipping timbers (except in cases
of wreck salvage?) and, especially, bricks for ballast (why do this?
unlike pig iron the material and technology to make bricks has been
easily accessible for millenia - they simply are not a major long
distance trade item) might well be subject to overinterpretation and
myth-production in the archaeological-historical record, as Pat
suggested in one of the earlier emails in this thread.

maureen basedow, Ph.d
greensboro, nc

David Rotenstein wrote:

>This is an interesting thread. It makes you think about the range of
>consumable shipping containers (log rafts, canal arks, and now, today, metal
>shipping containers used in Afghanistan as residences and prison cells) and
>the ways in which shippers minimized costs by using such things as brick and
>pig iron as ballast. In meatpacking and leather, an interesting exchange
>developed in the last decades of the 19th century because American leather
>interests wanted to limit the shipping of beef cattle on the hoof to Europe.
>The leather industry lobbied for more dressed beef shipments to prevent the
>European leather markets from having a competitive advantage over American
>tanners by importing the most valuable of meat byproducts: hides.
>
>DSR.
>_________________________________________
>David S. Rotenstein, Ph.D., RPA
>Consulting Historian
>Silver Spring, MD 20910
>Fax: (301) 588-9394
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>