Over the course of about a hundred years in the second and third centuries A.D., more than 50 million single-use ceramic amphoras carried some 1.5 billion gallons of olive oil to Rome. Their smashed remains created a landfill likely even.) Sometimes called the city’s “eighth hill,” Monte Testaccio is a boon for archaeologists who study production and consumption, but the Romans may have realized their system was untenable. They made increasing use of crushed and even whole amphoras as fill in concrete construction, and the presence of recycled jars on Roman shipwrecks suggests a change in their thinking about trash.
