A Study in the Composition Patterns of Mycenaean Pictorial Pottery from Cyprus

Abstract

Previous study of the relationship between provenance and composition in the Late Bronze Age painted pottery of Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece has shown that it is possible to distinguish a number of different types of composition which have a clearly defined territorial significance. One type of composition has been found to be characteristic of sites in the Peloponnese, two others to be almost wholly confined to north Greece, yet another to be distinctive of central Crete, and so forth. This stage of the original investigation, in fact, defined the different composition patterns which could be associated with the producing centres in the Minoan and Mycenaean homelands. But much Minoan and an even greater quantity of Mycenaean pottery has been recovered from regions far removed from these production centres. Such finds have been recorded from South Italy and Sicily, from the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, in Cyprus, Syria and Palestine, and in Egypt. A second phase of the original investigation therefore concentrated on this material. It was found, for instance, that Mycenaean pottery found in North Syria at Tell Atchana, and in Egypt at Tell el Amarna, was indistinguishable from the composition pattern (Group A) of the Mycenaean pottery from sites in the Peloponnese. This congruence was interpreted to mean that such pottery had been made in the Peloponnese and that it had travelled to Syria and to Egypt in the course of trade.