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Stirrup jars, containers for oil and wine, are found at various sites throughout the Aegean from the time of their invention on Crete in MM III. Although much attention has been directed toward later versions (some with painted Linear B inscriptions), early stirrup jars-their origins, evolution, and distribution-have been poorly documented. Here the early history of this important vessel is examined. Since most early stirrup jars are sparsely decorated, if at all, the dating of individual specimens must usually be based upon typological details. Among the diagnostic features are the three-handle arrangement, disc hole, spout horns, and shape of the false neck and spout. By Late Minoan IA the form was well established on Crete and in the Cyclades. It was not, however, until LM IB/LH IIA that it reached the Greek mainland, and then only in small numbers. The stirrup jar,' a specialized container for oil or wine,2 is a vessel characteristic of the Aegean Late Bronze Age. Best known are the later versions, both the Mycenaean fine ware types, found throughout the eastern Mediterranean,3 and the large, coarse ware variety, many bearing painted Linear B inscriptions.4 Early stirrup jars have been relatively neglected. It is my intention to examine the date and place of the invention of the form, and its early typological development and distribution. Recent finds at Kommos on Crete, Ayia Irini on Keos, and Akrotiri on Thera have added fresh evidence, necessitating a re-examination of early stirrup jars. * A summary of this study was delivered at the 81st General Meeting of the AIA (Boston, December 1979): AJA 84 (1980) 210. It is part of wider research on the stirrup jar, and is a development of work done for my Ph.D. dissertation on coarse ware stirrup jars (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1981). SKnown also as Biigelkanne, and false-necked amphora. The name for the shape in Linear B, ka-rare we , is confirmed by a tablet at Knossos (K 778): M. Ventris and J. Chadwick, Documents in Mycenaean Greek2 (Cambridge 1973) 324, 328; A. Evans, Scripta Minoa 2 (Oxford 1952; hereafter SM) 778. 2 A note of caution should be sounded here, since the most secure evidence for contents comes from a much later context, 13th c. Pylos: for oil (Fr 1184), Ventris and Chadwick (supra n. 1) 481, and E. Bennett, "The Olive Oil Tablets of Pylos," Minos Suppl. 2 (1958) 40-41; for wine, C. Blegen, The Palace of Nestor at Pylos in Western Messenia 1 (Princeton 1966) 342-47, and AJA 63 (1959) 133-35. 3 Furumark Shape (FS) 165-85: A. Furumark, The Mycenaean Pottery (Stockholm 1941) 610. F. Stubbings calls the fine ware stirrup jar, often found in tombs, the Bronze Age equivalent of the Classical lekythos: BSA 42 (1947) 24. 4 FS 164. For inscribed jars, see J. Raison, Les vases a inscriptions peintes de lage mycinien et leur context archdologique (Rome 1968), and A. Sacconi, Corpus delle iscrizioni vascolari in lineare B (Rome 1974); also H. Catling et. al., BSA 75 (1980) 49-113. The excavators at Troy used the word "oatmeal" as a descrip...

The coarse-ware stirrup-jars presented here come from two buildings at Mycenae excavated by Alan Wace from 1950 to 1952: the House of the Wine Merchant (HWM), and the House of the Oil Merchant (HOM). Over fifty examples were found in the HWM, and twenty-seven (plus three semi-fine ones) in the HOM, and as such they comprise the largest surviving deposits of the type apart from that of the Kadmeion at Thebes (where Keramopoullos found at least 120).Although coarse stirrup-jars have received an increasing amount of attention in the last quarter-century, nearly all of the work has focused on those bearing painted Linear B inscriptions; results of philological studies, and of scientific analyses of the clay fabric, have provided fresh evidence for the debate concerning the political and economic relations between Post-Palatial Crete and the Greek mainland. With one possible exception, none of the jars from the two Mycenae deposits is inscribed, but the evidence indicates that, as is the case with inscribed jars, many were manufactured on Crete. Many of the jars fall into distinct typological groups, with parallels from other findspots at Mycenae, and other Aegean sites. The deposits are fairly well dated, and illustrate the diversity of coarse-ware stirrup-jars in use at Mycenae in the late fourteenth to the middle of the thirteenth century B.C.

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