Cosa

A town on west coast of Italy, north of Rome, that was a Latin colony founded in 273 BC. There is well-preserved massive polygonal masonry surviving in the city walls, the forum, basilica, citadel, capitol, baths, and temples - as well as remains of the grid street plan. The site was abandoned in 1st century BC.

[Modern Ansedonia]. A town on the west coast of Italy, some 140 km north of Rome. Cosa was a Latin colony, founded on a coastal crag in 273 BC to confirm Roman domination in an area that was still felt to be too strongly Etruscan. The fate of Etruscan Cusi (from which the Roman name derives) is obscure, and the site has not been identified. Roman Cosa enjoyed its greatest prosperity under the later Republic. Massive polygonal masonry survives, as do remains of the grid street-plan, forum, basilica and citadel. Some of the engineering in the port area may be Etruscan. The Imperial period brought a decline, although there is some use into the 3rd century ad. Later, in the 4th-5th centuries, the ruins of the forum became the centre of a large estate. costrel. A medieval pottery flask. Flasks were probably very common in the Middle Ages, but most were made of leather and have not survived. Merovingian and Carolingian pottery costrcls tend to be roughly round in shap, with a slight neck into which a stopper was rammed. The best-known is the Zelzate costrel, made in the ‘BADORF-type’ industries of the central Rhineland, which contained a Viking-period hoard dating to 870. The other well-known type is the barrel variant found in 13th—16th-century contexts, and probably made in northern and western France. Barrel costrcls were in great demand and were widely traded; a hoard of them was found in Winchester.