The archaeological season of 2009 undertaken in the agora of the ancient city of Apllonia, revealed new data about the occupation phases of the Roman Republic and Early Imperial periods. The richest stratigraphical sequence of Roman ceramics was uncovered in US 422 of sondage 4. It consists of a yellow clay layer containing abundant fragments of Arretine sigillata of the 1st Century AD, pseudo-_sigillata_, as well as common and cooking ware fragments. This layer was not associated with any structural trace, as the sondages are located at the foot of hill 104. Consequently the assembled materials seem to arrive from the top or slope of the hill 104. However, the context appears chronologically reliable and coherent.
Roman artifacts coming from the other sondages were often found in association with late Hellenistic materials (sectors: 1 US 455; 1B –US 456; 2 US 411 and 439; 5-US 574; 13-US 634). These materials, which appear slightly uniform in the stratigraphical context, belong to the 2nd – 1st Centuries BC. Nevertheless, the uncovered layers are very important as they show that the previous Hellenistic ceramic types (of black gloss) and the new Roman groups (_sigillata_), were in use during same time. These stratigraphic units generally correspond to corridors as well as demolition layers. Among the sigillata ceramic group, Italic wares and pseudo –_¬sigillata_ fragments dominate. The latter represent local productions of the 2nd Century, which stayed in use together with the Italic and provincial sigillata, until Early Imperial times. The pseudo-_sigillata_ (dominated by plates and cups) reproduces almost all the sigillata forms, though the clay and painting appears of a less good quality.
The common and cooking wares which represent the largest number of shapes found in the excavated sondages consist of pots, bowls, plates, lambs, unguentaria etc., mostly without decorations. Some of the vessels are covered with bitumium on their inner parts, and is most likely to be of local production as this mineral used to be (as mentioned by Strabo W. 5, 8, C 316) and is still present in the territories around Apollonia.
The chronology of the Roman pottery revealed in the agora of the ancient city began at the 2nd Century BC and was interrupted at the 1st Century AD. It remains to be established whether this interruption relates to the temporary abandonment of the agora in the 1st Century BC, and the construction in the 2nd Century AD of a new public area, located at the southwestern part of the hill 104 (conventionally named as “the monumental center”), or to the military interventions of the last century.