Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T08:25:19.673Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A potter's workshop from Middle Bronze Age Cyprus: new light on production context, scale and variability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

David Frankel  and
Jennifer M. Webb
David Frankel
Affiliation:
*Department of Archaeology, Environment and Community Planning, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC 3086, Australia (Email: [email protected]; [email protected])
Jennifer M. Webb
Affiliation:
*Department of Archaeology, Environment and Community Planning, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC 3086, Australia (Email: [email protected]; [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

When fire swept through a workshop at Ambelikou Aletri on Cyprus in the nineteenth or twentieth century BC it brought a sudden halt to pottery production, leaving the latest batch of recently fired vessels. The remains of the kiln and its immediate surroundings provide a rare opportunity to gain direct insight into the technology and organisation of a Middle Bronze Age pottery workshop in the eastern Mediterranean. Analysis of the batch of cutaway-mouthed jugs adjacent to the kiln reveals a level of standardisation focused more on vessel shape than capacity, and shows that at a detailed level, no two jugs were alike. This pottery production site provides vital background for the study of contemporary pottery assemblages on Cyprus and elsewhere in the broader region.

Keywords

CyprusAmbelikou AletriMiddle Bronze Agepottery kilncutaway-mouthed jugscoefficient of variation
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 88 , Issue 340 , 01 June 2014 , pp. 425 - 440
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arnold, P.J. 1991a. Domestic ceramic production and spatial organization. A Mexican case study in ethnoarchaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Arnold, P.J. 1991b. Dimensional standardization and production scale in Mesoamerican ceramics. Latin American Antiquity 2: 363–70.Google Scholar
Arnold, P.J. 1999. On typologies, selection, and ethnoarchaeology in ceramic production studies, in Chilton, E. (ed.) Material meanings: critical approaches to the interpretation of material culture: 103–17. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.Google Scholar
Arnold, D.E. & Nieves, A.. 1992. Factors affecting ceramic standardisation, in Bey, G. & Pool, C. (ed.) Ceramic production and distribution: an integrated approach: 93–113. Boulder (CO): Westview.Google Scholar
Balfet, H. 1965. Ethnoarchaeological observations in North Africa and archaeological interpretation: the pottery of the Magreb, in Matson, F. (ed.) Ceramics and man: 161–77. Chicago (IL): Aldine.Google Scholar
Belfiore, C.M., Day, P.M., Hein, A., Kilikoglou, V., Rosa, V. La, Mazzoleni, P. & Pezzino, A.. 2007. Petrographic and chemical characterization of pottery production of the Late Minoan I kiln at Haghia Triada, Crete. Archaeometry 49: 621–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4754.2007.00324.x Google Scholar
Costin, C.L. 1991. Craft specialization: issues in defining, documenting and explaining the organization of production, in Schiffer, M.B. (ed.) Archaeological method and theory, volume 3: 1–56. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Deal, M. 1998. Pottery ethnoarchaeology in the Central Maya Highlands (Foundations of Archaeological Inquiry). Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.Google Scholar
Dikaios, P. 1946. A new chapter in the long island history of Cyprus: wartime discoveries of the earliest copper age. Illustrated London News 208 (5576) 2 March 1946, pp. 244–45.Google Scholar
Frankel, D. 1981. Uniformity and variation in a Cypriot ceramic tradition. Levant 12: 88–106.Google Scholar
Frankel, D. 1988. Pottery production in prehistoric Bronze Age Cyprus: assessing the problem. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 1: 27–55.Google Scholar
Frankel, D. 1991. Ceramic variability: measurement and meaning, in Barlow, J., Bolger, D. & Kling, B. (ed.) Cypriot ceramics: reading the prehistoric record (University Museum Monographs 74): 241–52. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Frankel, D. & Webb, J.M.. 2001. Population, households and ceramic consumption in a prehistoric Cypriot village. Journal of Field Archaeology 28: 115–29.Google Scholar
Frankel, D. & Webb, J.M.. 2006. Marki Alonia. An Early and Middle Bronze Age settlement in Cyprus (Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 123.2). Sävedalen: Astrom.Google Scholar
Frankel, D. & Webb, J.M.. 2007. The Bronze Age cemeteries at Deneia in Cyprus (Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 135). Sävedalen: Astrom.Google Scholar
Frankel, D. & Webb, J.M.. 2009. Colors and clouds of Bronze Age Cyprus. Ceramics Technical 29: 3–7.Google Scholar
Frankel, D. & Webb, J.M.. 2012. Pottery production and distribution in prehistoric Bronze Age Cyprus. An application of pXRF analysis. Journal of Archaeological Science 39: 1380–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2011.12.032 Google Scholar
Hansen Streily, A. 2000. Early pottery kilns in the Middle East. Paléorient 26(2): 69–81.Google Scholar
London, G.A. 1989. On fig leaves, itinerant potters, and pottery production locations in Cyprus, in McGovern, P.E., Notis, M.D. & Kingery, W.D. (ed.) Cross-craft and cross-cultural interactions in ceramics (Ceramics and Civilization IV): 65–80. Westerville (OH): American Ceramic Society.Google Scholar
London, G.A. 1991a. Standardization and variation in the work of craft specialists, in Longacre, W.A. (ed.) Ceramic ethnoarchaeology: 182–204. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
London, G.A. 1991b. Ethnoarchaeological evidence of variation in Cypriot ceramics and its implications for the taxonomy of ancient pottery, in Barlow, J.A., Bolger, D.L. & Kling, B. (ed.) Cypriot ceramics: reading the prehistoric record (University Museum Monographs 74): 221–35. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
London, G.A. 2002. Women potters and craft specialization in a pre-market Cypriot economy, in Bolger, D. & Serwint, N. (ed.) Engendering Aphrodite: women and society in ancient Cyprus (CAARI Monographs 3): 265–80. Boston (MA): American Schools of Oriental Research.Google Scholar
Longacre, W.A. 1999. Standardization and specialization: what's the link?, in Skibo, J.A. & Feinman, G.M. (ed.) Pottery and people: a dynamic link: 44–58. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.Google Scholar
Merrillees, R.S. 1984. Ambelikou-Aletri: a preliminary report. Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus 1984: 1–13.Google Scholar
Nicholson, P.T. 2010. Kilns and firing structures, in Wendrich, W. (ed.) UCLA encyclopedia of Egyptology. Available at: http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/zz0025sr24 (accessed 28 January 2014).Google Scholar
Rice, P.M. 1981. Evolution of specialized pottery production: a trial model. Current Anthropology 22: 219–40.Google Scholar
Rice, P.M. 1991. Specialization, standardization and diversity: a retrospective, in Bishop, R.L. & Lange, F.W. (ed.) The ceramic legacy of Anna O. Shepard: 257–79. Niwot: University of Colorado Press.Google Scholar
Rye, O.S. 1981. Pottery technology: principles and reconstruction. Washington, D.C.: Taraxacum.Google Scholar
Rye, O.S. & Evans, C.. 1976. Traditional pottery techniques of Pakistan: field and laboratory studies (Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology 21). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Spencer, A.J. 1997. Pottery in Predynastic Egypt, in Freestone, I. & Gaimster, D. (ed.) Pottery in the making: ceramic traditions: 44–49. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Stark, B.M. 1985. Archaeological identification of pottery production locations: ethnoarchaeological and archaeological data in Mesoamerica, in Nelson, B.A. (ed.) Decoding prehistoric ceramics: 158–94. Carbondale & Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Tomlinson, J.E. & Kilikoglou, V.. 1998. Neutron activation analysis of pottery from the Early Orientalising kiln at Knossos. Annual of the British School at Athens 93: 385–88.Google Scholar
Webb, J.M. 2010. The ceramic industry of Deneia: crafting community and place in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus, in Bolger, D.L. & Maguire, L. (ed.) The development of pre-state communities in the ancient Near East: studies in honour of Edgar Peltenburg: 174–82. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar
Webb, J.M. & Frankel, D.. 2013. Excavations at Amebelikou Aletri, 1942. Metallurgy and pottery production in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus (Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 138). Uppsala: Astrom.Google Scholar