The store rooms of the Department of Antiquities at Apollonia contain pottery from excavations at Apollonia and Ras el Hilal, together with a few stray finds from other sites (including some from the sea collected by the Royal Air Force Aqualung Society in the 1950s and early 1960s). The bulk of this material dates in the later Roman period (i.e. sixth century A.D. onwards), but includes a little earlier Roman and some Hellenistic pottery. There is a representative selection of coarse wares, including amphoras, as yet unpublished. These are mainly in fragmentary condition but their typological range conforms with that from the well stratified and dated excavations at Berenice-Benghazi (Riley, in press).

Publication of the more complete of these amphoras seems justified as there is a relative scarcity of published information on Roman amphoras from the eastern Mediterranean, at a time when many eastern types are being recognised in western Mediterranean excavated contexts (Panella, 1974; Hayes, 1976a; Riley, 1981). In addition, a brief consideration of the other amphoras helps to illustrate the diversity of trade in liquid agricultural produce within the eastern Mediterranean region. No locally made amphoras were noted on the Apollonia stone: all were imported into Cyrenaica.

The Hellenistic period is represented by Rhodian (Inv. Nos. 321, 322 and 1582) and Knidian (Inv. Nos. 141 and 723) amphora fragments. There are several sherds of early Imperial amphoras, and attention has been drawn to these by Panella (1974). These include a first to second century A.D. Aegean type (ibid., 477, Ostia Form LXIII; Apollonia Box 2036, from Ras el Hilal); a Spanish garum amphora of the same period (ibid., 513, Ostia Form LXIII; Apollonia Inv. No. 256); several Tripolitanian amphoras of the first and second centuries A.D. (ibid., 562, Ostia Form LXIV; Apollonia Inv. Nos. 253, 254, 315 and 317); and a common Aegean amphora of the third and fourth centuries A.D. (ibid., 597, Ostia Form VI).