The social impact of mycenaean imported pottery in cyprus

The Annual of the British School at Athens

Volumn 93, Issue , 1998, Pages 285-296

  Steel, Louise ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 85009628482     PISSN: 00682454     EISSN: 20452403     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0068245400003464     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. V. Hankey, ‘Mycenaean pottery in the Middle East: notes on finds since 1951’, BSA 62 (1967), 107-47; G. Cadogan, in Acts, 166-74; id. (1993) ‘Cyprus, Mycenaean pottery, trade and colonisation’, in C. Zerner (ed.) Wace and Blegen. Pottery as Evidence for Trade in the Aegean Bronze Age. 1939-1989, (Amsterdam, 1993), 91-9; most recently A. L. Leonard, An Index to the Late Bronze Age Aegean Pottery from Syria-Palestine (SIMA 114; Jonsered, 1994).
2. A. Appadurai, ‘Introduction: commodities and the politics of value’, in A. Appadurai (ed.) The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, 1986); K. Arafat and C. Morgan, ‘Athens, Etruria and the Heuneburg: mutual misconceptions in the study of Greek-barbarian relations’, in I. Morris (ed.), Classical Greece: Ancient Histories and Modern Archaeologies (Cambridge, 1994), 108. For the adoption of specific elements of another culture see L.V. Watrous, ‘The role of the Near East in the rise of Cretan palaces’, in R. Hägg (ed.), The Function of Minoan Palaces (Stockholm, 1967), 66 J. Smith, ‘Cylinder Seals in the Aegean: Contextual and Spatial Analyses of Exchange’, (unpublished MA thesis, Bryn Mawr, 1989); Y. Marshall and A. Maas, ‘Dashing dishes’, World Archaeology 28.3, 275-90.
3. G. Cadogan in Acts, 168-71.
4. H. W. Catling ‘Aegean pottery in Late Bronze Age Cyprus’, in R. E. Jones, Greek and Cypriot Pottery: A Review of Scientific Studies (Athens, 1986), 591. At Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios, for example, Aegean imports at most comprise only 1-2% of the total excavated ceramics (before the inclusion of the plain wares and pithos to the total counts), A. K. South and P. Russell, ‘Mycenaean pottery and social hierarchy at Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios, Cyprus’, in C. Zerner (ed.), Wace and Blegen. Pottery as Evidence for Trade in the Aegean Bronze Age. 1939-1989, (Amsterdam, 1993), 303.
5. For example note the predominance of Mycenaean pottery in the LC II A sanctuary at Ayia-Irini, SCE i. 356-61, pl. lxvi. Also note the dump of Mycenaean drinking equipment in a LC II C pit/latrine in Building X at Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios (A. 173), together with meat-bearing bones of caprine, probably the debris of élite feasting in the administrative/public area of the site: A. South, ‘Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios 1987’, RDAC 1988, Part 1, 227-8: South and Russell (n. 5), 304-6.
6. Cadogan, in Acts, 169.
7. A. L. Leonard. ‘Considerations of morphological variation in the Mycenaean pottery from the southeastern Mediterranean’, BASOR 241 (1989), 94-100.
8. E.S. Sherratt, ‘Patterns of contact between the Aegean and Cyprus in the 13th and 12th centuries BC’, Archaeologia Cypria, 3 (1994), 36.
9. V. Karageorghis, Kition: Mycenaean and Phoenician Discoveries in Cyprus (London, 1976), pl. iv.
10. MPVP 8.
11. P. S. Keswani, ‘Mortuary Ritual and Social Hierarchy in Bronze Age Cyprus’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Michigan), 1989, 562.
12. V. Karageorghis, ‘A Late Mycenaean III B chariot crater from Cyprus’, RDAC 1982, 82.
13. Catling (n. 5), 594.
14. But see Sherratt (n. 9), 35.
15. Ead. ‘Regional variation in the pottery of Late Helladic IIIB’, BSA 75 (1980), 196.
16. Ead. (n. 9), 36.
17. V. Hankey (n. 2), 145.
18. MPVP 8. 146.
19. E. Sjöqvist, Problems of the Late Cypriote Bronze Age (Stockholm, 1940), 30 : the Levanto-Helladic ware.
20. H. W. Catling, ‘Correlations between compostion and provenance of Mycenaean and Minoan pottery’, BSA 58 (1963), 94-115 H. W. Catling and A. Millett, ‘A Study in the composition and provenance of Mycenaean Pictorial Pottery from Cyprus’, BSA 60 (1965), 212-24; H. W. Catling et at., ‘Composition and provenance problems in Late Bronze Age pottery’, RDAC (1978), 70-90; F. Asaro and I. Perlman, ‘Provenience studies of Mycenaean pottery employing Neutron Activation Analysis’, in Acts, 213-24.
21. MPVP 9.
22. Ethnographic studies of pottery production have shown that the motor habit patterns and skills involved in learning a particular ceramic technology are usually acquired over a long period and most easily and effectively during childhood. It is more difficult to acquire these skills and to achieve the same level of competency as an adult. D. E. Arnold. Ceramic Theory and Cultural Process (Cambridge, 1985), 205-6. As a corollary, Arnold notes the enormous difficulties involved in transmitting technological innovations across cultural boundaries: ‘First, the motor habit patterns of the innovation may be incompatible with the motor habit patterns already existing in the society. The wheel for example, may be resisted because the traditional motor habit patterns may not conform to those required by this innovation’ (MPVP 9. 221). This has enormous implications for the appearance and eventual adoption of wheel-made Mycenaean fine wares (both imports and local copies) in Cyprus.
23. Sherratt interprets the increasing standardization and apparent mass production of pottery (specifically the WPWM III ware) as part of a general process of urbanization and administrative centralization on Cyprus during the thirteenth and twelfth centuries BC: c. f. Cypriot Ceramics, 191.
24. P. Russell, in KAD ii. 7, 8.
25. For a summary of provenience studies of Late Bronze Age Cyprus and bibliography c. f. A. B. Knapp and J. F. Cherry, Provenience Studies and Bronze Age Cyprus: Production, Exchange and Politico-Economic Change (Madison, Wis., 1984), 18, 21-3, 45-6, 61-2.
26. Cf. R. Merrillees, Alashiya Revisited (Paris, 1987) for a review of the history of research on the Alashiya question. A. B. Knapp et al., Sources for the History of Cyprus II: Near Eastern and Aegean Texts from the Third to the First Millennium BC, Greece and Cyprus Research Centre. Cf. also J. Smith, ‘Seals for Sealing in the Late Bronze Age’, (unpublished PhD. thesis, Bryn Mawr, 1994), 9-44, for discussion of historical and systemic models of LC political complexity (chiefdom or state) and discussion of Alashiya.
27. It has been suggested that there was a unified island-wide kingdom [of Alashiya?] on Cyprus in the Late Bronze Age, possibly dominated by a pre-eminent centre, usually assumed to be Enkomi; A. B. Knapp, ‘Ideology, archaeology and polity’, Man, (NS) 23 (1988), 151-210.2307/2803037, J. Muhly, ‘The organization of the copper industry in Late Bronze Age Cyprus’, in ESC 303. Keswani, however, ‘Models of local exchange in Late Bronze Age Cyprus’, BASOR 292 (1993), 74-5 argues against an island-wide polity, noting the very great regional variation in ‘state’ architecture (temples etc.), the lack of evidence for a coherent administrative technology, and the lack of evidence for an administrative or social hierarchy centred on Enkomi as indicated by the patterning of élite funerary assemblages across the island. Others have also noted the regional-based organization of Late Bronze Age Cyprus, based on local control of copper or agricultural resources, J. M. Webb and D. Frankel, ‘Making an impression: storage and surplus finance in Late Bronze Age Cyprus’, JMA 7 (1994), 5, or the élite's privileged access to the Late Bronze Age international trading systems.
28. A. B. Knapp, ‘The bronze age economy of Cyprus’, in V. Karageorghis and D. Michaelides (eds), The Development of the Cypriot Economy from the Prehistoric Period to the Present (Nicosia, 1996), 79-80.
29. A. K. South, ‘From copper to kingship: aspects of Bronze Age society viewed from the Vasilikos valley’, in ESC 319.
30. H.W. Catling, ‘Patterns of settlement in Bronze Age Cyprus’, Op. Ath. 4 (1963), 144-5; c.f. also discussion in Keswani (n. 29), 76-80. For example a LC I smelting site at Politiko-Phorades, A. B. Knapp, The Archaeology of Late Bronze Age Cypriot Society. The Study of Settlement, Survey, and Landscape (Glasgow, 1997), 41. Analiondas-Palioklichia is probably an example of a small agricultural village, c. f. J. M. Webb and D. Frankel (n. 29), 5-26 and the so-called LC IIIA sanctuary at Ayia Irini (SCE i. 820-1) likewise demonstrates all the characteristics of an agricultural production and storage centre, probably dating to LC II C.
31. P. S. Keswani, ‘Dimensions of social hierarchy in Late Bronze Age Cyprus: an analysis of the mortuary data from Enkomi’, JMA 2 (1989), 49-86.
32. J. B. Carter. ‘Ancestor cult and the occasion of heroic performance’, in J. B. Carter and S. Morris (eds), The Ages of Homer. A Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule (Austin, 1995), 303. C.f. e.g. S. Langdon, ‘The return of the horse-leader’, AJA 93 (1989)10.2307/505086. fig. 13, or scenes on cylinder seals of the late second millennium BC, G. Contenau, La Glyptique syro-hittite (Paris, 1922). pl. XXVII, figs. 193, 196.
33. See for example E. Hersher (forthcoming) in R. Laffineur (ed.). Four Thousand Years of Images on Cypriote Pottery.
34. E. Goring. ‘Death in everyday life: aspects of burial practices in the Late Bronze Age’, in ESC 102.
35. G. H. McFadden, ‘A Late Cypriot III Tomb from Kourion Kaloriziki no. 40’, AJA 58 (1954), 131-4210.2307/500111.
36. KAD ii, figs. 43, 48-52, 57, pls. xxi, xxiii-xxv, xxviii. See also the range of White Slip vessels in M. R. Popham, ‘White Slip ware’, SCE iv.IC, fig. 55, many of which are from the Kalavasos region.
37. C. Epstein, Palestinian Bichrome Ware (Leiden, 1966), fig. 1: for distribution of ware.
38. Leonard (n. 2), 23-7.
39. P. A. Mountjoy Mycenaean Pottery. An Introduction (Oxford, 1993). 73.
40. A. Appadurai (n. 3), 38.
41. Russell (n. 26), 4. See for example figs. 48-52.
42. Four Thousand Years of Images on Cypriote Pottery. (n. 26), 3.
43. S. Vaughan (1991), ‘Material and technical classification of Base Ring ware: a new fabric typology’, in Cypriot Ceramics 124.
44. Russell (n. 43), 66, she notes that the shape would have been particularly suited for drinking wine as the sediment would have settled in the central cavity, leaving a clear liquid over the top.
45. Arafat and Morgan (n. 3), 124.
46. Arafat and Morgan. 113.
47. For example the Vapheio cup: R. Higgins, Minoan and Mycenaean Art (London 1980, 2nd edn.), ill. 180 or the fine series of decorated metal amphorae from the end of the Late Bronze Age on Cyprus, e.g. Palaepaphos-Teratsoudhia, tomb 104, V. Karageorghis (n. 43), pls. xxiv, liv, and Kourion, CBMW, pls 23-4.
48. Epstein (n. 40), 23-56, esp. 54.
49. L. Steel, ‘Pictorial White Slip―the discovery of a new ceramic style in Cyprus’, in R. Laffineur (ed.), Four Thousand Years of Images on Cypriot Pottery (Liège, in press).
50. Cf discussion in Keswani (n. 12), 563-5.
51. GGP, pls. 8a, 9a-b.
52. e.g. krater 4460 from Ugarit: J.-C. Courtois, ‘Sur divers groupes de vases mycéniens en Mediterranée orientale (1250-1150)’, in Acts, figs. 2-3, pl. xxi.5; MPVP III. 26, v. 55, v. 60.
53. Boxing: MPVP v. 14, 29, 32-36; running: E. Rystedt, ‘The foot-race and other athletic contests in the Mycenaean world. The evidence of the pictorial style vase’, Op. Ath. 16 (1986), 103-16, MPVP v. 28; horse-rider: MPVP v. 26; bull-leaping: MPVP iii. 31, v. 48, 50; V. Karageorghis, ‘Chronique des fouilles à Chypre en 1977’, BCH 102 (1978), 914, fig. 78.
54. H. B. Walters, ‘Excavations at Curium’, in A. S. Murray, A. H. Smith, and H. B. Walters, Excavations in Cyprus (London, 1900, repr 1970), 73, fig. 127, MPVP iii. 12.
55. MPVP iii. 10.
56. ‘Sur divers groupes de vases mycéniens en Mediterranée orientale (1250-1150)’. iii. 11.
57. Hommage krater (Aradippo): MPVP iii. 29; Kalavasos shrine krater: L. Steel, ‘Representations of a shrine on a Mycenaean chariot krater from Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios, Cyprus’, BSA 89 (1994), figs. 2, 4, pls 37-8.
58. MPVP V.27.
59. K. Eriksson, Red Lustrous Wheel-made Ware (SIMA 103; Jonsered, 1993), 58.
60. Of particular note is the unusually high incidence of Red Lustrous vases from the wealthy tomb 11 at Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios, MPVP V.27. 44-5; Goring (n. 36), 102; South (n. 31), 318.
61. e.g. White Slip spindle bottles: SCE ivv.IC, fig. 56.11; K-AD 82, KAD ii, fig. 43. Base Ring spindle bottles: e.g. K-AD 161, 1088, MPVP V.27. fig. 44. Base Ring flasks: e.g. K-AD 125, 1085, 1087; MPVP V.27. fig. 44.
62. e.g. Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios tomb 1 (K-AD 84, 1093), tomb 6 (K-AD 248, 249); KAD ii, figs. 45, 59.
63. Eriksson (n. 58), 58, 139, 147, 149-53.146.