2/09/2025, 10:40 Dolia: the containers that made Rome an empire of wine – Bryn Mawr Classical Review Pagina 1 van 8 https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2025/2025.08.14/ BMCR Bryn Mawr Classical Review BMCR 2025.08.14 Dolia: the containers that made Rome an empire of wine Caroline Cheung, Dolia: the containers that made Rome an empire of wine. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2024. Pp. 344. ISBN 9780691243009. Review by Dimitri Van Limbergen, Università degli studi di Verona. dimitri.vanlimbergen@univr.it Preview Dolia or large globular, sometimes egg- or strawberry-shaped earthenware vessels are perhaps one of the most fascinating pottery types in the Roman world. Long considered a rather generic type of coarseware for general food storage, with little or no change over time in shape and manufacturing practices, their important role in agricultural production and storage—especially for the wine and olive oil business—has received much more attention in recent years. [1] Caroline Cheung’s debut monograph now adds to this growing line of scholarship with a first-time panoramic account of the life cycle and role of dolia in the Roman Mediterranean. Such a focus volume is timely, and overall Cheung succeeds in demonstrating the major significance of dolia in both rural and urban storage, as well as the technical achievements of its manufacturing industry, but in the end imperfections in data analysis and interpretation prevent Cheung’s book from becoming the new reference work that it so clearly wants to be.