There are also places where clay containers were used for shipping, but because they could just be made at the source, they were destroyed at the destination to avoid having to ship them back.
There’s a huge landfill (I forget where) that to this day is basically just an artificial hill made out of pottery shards
New Orleans is filled with houses built of lumber from discarded flatboats. Goods would be shipped down the Mississippi river then the boats would be abandoned or dismantled since they couldn’t be floated back up river. That left a nice surplus of lumber in a city that didn’t have that much natively.
There are also places where clay containers were used for shipping, but because they could just be made at the source, they were destroyed at the destination to avoid having to ship them back.
There’s a huge landfill (I forget where) that to this day is basically just an artificial hill made out of pottery shards
This was just a random foot note in Mary Beard’s “Emperor of Rome” and I hate that there’s not that much more to say about it.
A 5 acre wide mountain!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Testaccio
New Orleans is filled with houses built of lumber from discarded flatboats. Goods would be shipped down the Mississippi river then the boats would be abandoned or dismantled since they couldn’t be floated back up river. That left a nice surplus of lumber in a city that didn’t have that much natively.