Amphora Iron Ages amphorae spread around the ancient Mediterranean world, being used by the ancient Greeks and Romans as the principal means for transporting and storing grapes, olive oil, wine, oil, olives, grain, fish, and other commodities. They were produced on an industrial scale until approximately the 7th century AD. Wooden and skin containers seem to have supplanted amphorae thereafter. They influenced Chinese ceramics and other East Asian ceramic cultures, especially as a fancy shape for high-quality decorative ceramics, and continued to be produced there long after they had ceased to be used further west. Besides coarse amphorae used for storage
Ancient Greece and wine wine. Ancient Greeks called the cultivated vine "hemeris" (Greek: ἡμερίς), after their adjective for "tame" (Greek: ἥμερος), differentiating it from its wild form. A massive rootstock was carved into a cult image of the Great Goddess and set up on the coast of Phrygia by the Argonauts. The late "Dionysiaca" of Nonnus recounts the primitive invention of wine-pressing, credited to Dionysus, and Homer's description of the Shield of Achilles describes that part of its wrought decoration illustrating the grape harvest from a vineyard protectively surrounded by a trench and a fence; the vines stand in rows supported on stakes. He