Scarichi e accumuli di tessere musive: proposte di linee interpretative

The finds of intentional deposits of loose mosaic tesserae are rather common during archaeological excavations. They are rich ith informative potential, if correctly assessed and compared to other data. Similar finds can be explained by two hypotheses: they can be dumps of waste or accumulations of materials made within a building or productive site. The essential difference is that in the first case the objects were placed in the dumps without any attention for their future reutilization; in the second, the accumulation was instead an operation planned for the objects’ future use. In each case, the deposits of loose mosaic tesserae allow to obtain considerable data regarding to the history of a building, providing information about its decorations or about the operations of construction or demolition. In some sites, they also attest the manufacture and the commerce of the tesserae.