K. Palágyi Sylvia szerk.: Balácai Közlemények 2005/9. (Veszprém, 2005)

GIRARDI JURKIC, VESNA: Roman Villa rustica in Cervar Porat (Croatia) - Excavation and Presentation

However, judging from their positioning in respect to the circular pressing areas, there is no doubt that those really were lapides pedicini. The wooden parts could have been set so that the perpendicular beams were fixed inside other wooden constructive elements. Those constructive elements could not move sideways because the raised rims of the stone blocks did not allow it. This means that the upper parts of the perpendicular beams were fixed to the beams of the roof construction, as would be the case with „simple" stone bases with two slots. These stone blocks were not linked to the outflow channel, and so were not used as sedimentation pool. Since there are no traces of wooden or other similar elements (lateral sides), the stone containers could not be vessels used for hand pressing. Since there are two presses with a circular area and blocks for fixing perpendicular beams' bases, there must have been a lowering mechanism situated in the western side of the room. It is exactly in that part of the room that the floor slants downward, due to the depression of the soil, but the lower level has not been discovered. The supposed length of the beam of 5.5 m corresponds to the lower area, and a similar organization of the mill production process is known at other presses in Istria (BrijuniKolci, Val Madona bay).

17 The liquid flowed from the circular channels situated around the base of the press and continued its course alongside a singular channel that was also made of small bricks and passed through a hole in the wall. On the other side of the wall the liquid flowed into a channel made of stone blocks with a groove that continued in the other room to the south (D). The stone segments were 40 cm wide, and the channel was 12 cm wide. Only three stone blocks with groove elements survived, in the northern part of the room. A fragment of a stone block with two square slots was discovered on the western side of the channel and parallel to it. It was obviously another base of the beam for the press (lapis pedicinus). A damaged stone block (dimensions: 1.86 cm x 0.78 cm), that was probably moved, was preserved from the pressing base. The remains of another pressing container, square shaped, with a similar groove all around it, were found in the same room, a bit more to the south. The base of the beam's support was not preserved in this case, but the lapis pedicinus was found in another position, in the north-eastern part of the remains of the building. It was built in the wall of a large room (G), and can be considered a part of this press. Its dimensions are 2.1 m x 1 m, and the two slots (47 cm x 49 cm) are connected in the central part of the upper surface by engraving, to form a single unit 5 cm deep. On both the sides that are narrower than the margins of the stone, a perpendicular slot was engraved, 22 cm x 17 cm, they were wooden beam slots. In any case, it can be assumed that those bases of the supports belong to an earlier phase. It can be assumed that the object had been reconstructed, because otherwise it is hard to imagine functional and practical reasons for the presence of two pillars holding pressing beams in the very same building. During the excavations, it was established that there was a channel that conducted the liquid from the last base towards south-west, passing over the place where the lapis pedicinus must had been situated. From the surviving remains it could not be deducted where exactly the end of the channel was. It is probable that the pressed liquid (oil) was