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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])
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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 

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