The exhibition "From the Amphora to the Urn"

The amphora is a pottery receptacle, with two handels, a tapering body and a pointed base, suitable for transporting oil, fish sauces, wine or other drinks, and other edible products. In Istria it si linked to antiquity and, as such, represents one of the “fossile guides” by whose help it is possible to follow the development of Roman trade and economy, with its highs and lows. In later times it was replaced by other receptacles made of different materials, such as wooden barrels.
The urn is a vessel for conserving the ashes of cremated bodies. Urns can be found made of the poorest materials or the finest, depending on the rank of the deceased person. During the Roman Age, not only in Istria but in the whole of the Roman Empire, it was one of the most widespread type of vessels connected with death until the advent of Christianity, when the practice of inhumation gradually took over.
The amphora and the urn symbolize two worlds. The first the world of the living, the second the world of the hereafter. Between these two worlds unfolds the story of the Roman Age in northwest Istria and its Karstic hinterland.
The time-span of theis presentation comprises more than half a millennium, from the time of the Roman conquest of Istria in the 2nd century BC until the 4th century AD, which saw the beginnings of the decline of the Roman Empire in this area. The defeat of the tribe of Histri in the second war against the Romans in 177 BC meant also the end of Histri’s autonomy and the beginning of the gradual Romanization of the Istrian peninsula. This peninsula, with the shifting of the northeast boundary of the Roman State, first along the river Rižana (Formio flumen) and then along the river Raša (Arsia flumen), become an integral part of the Roman Empire in the area of the Region X (Regio X) of the Augustan regional division of Italy. In this presentation an attempt has been made to illustriate the Roman Age in this area through some of the aspects of life on earth and beyond the earth – in other words, the world of the living and the world of the dead – which were strongly divided, and yet at the same time closely interwoven.