Correlations between composition and provenance of Mycenaean and Minoan pottery

Abstract

This investigation into the compositions of Minoan and Mycenaean pottery fabrics was carried out in Oxford at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art by permission of the Director, Dr. E. T. Hall. Mrs. E. E. Richards, co-author of this report, was in charge of the investigation, latterly with the assistance of Mrs. A. Millett. The potential importance of the work undertaken was first suggested by Mr. M. S. F. Hood, then Director of the British School at Athens. Mr. Hood has maintained lively interest in the investigation, and has made many valuable suggestions about the course it should take, as well as providing much of the sherd material. In this connexion we are greatly indebted to Dr. J. Papadimitriou, Director-General of Antiquities in Greece, for granting the necessary export permits. We are also grateful to Mr. M. R. Popham, for scraping selected sherds in the Herakleion Museum and in the Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos, and to Dr. N. Platon, then Ephor of Antiquities in Crete, for allowing this to be done. Sherds from Thebes in the University Museum, Reading, were loaned by Mrs. A. N. Ure; the Rev. Dr. A. J. Arkell provided a set of Mycenaean sherds from Tell el Amarna from the collections in University College, London. Fragments from Rhodes were given by the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum through the kindness of Mr. D. E. L. Haynes and Mr. R. A. Higgins. Other sherds were provided from the reserve collection in the Ashmolean Museum. The sherds tested in the course of the investigation are now housed in the Ashmolean, with the exception of the group from Thebes (Reading).

A Reinvestigation of the Provenance of the Inscribed Stirrup Jars Found at Thebes

“…Asaro and Perlman (1973) also discovered considerable heterogeneity in the compositions of Chania Minoan pottery in their studies of Bronze Age Aegean pottery using neutron activation analysis. The existence of two composition types at Thebes confirms the original work by Catling et al (1963). Inspection of the analytical data for the individual TSJs given in table 2 indicates some degree of variation in composition.…”

Hellenistic Glazed Wares From Athens and Southern Italy: Analytical Techniques and Implications

“…Chemical analysis of pottery by optical emission spectroscopy has been undertaken at the Oxford Research Laboratory over a period of more than twelve years. The original inquiries concerned Minoan and Mycenean pottery, its places of manufacture and its wider distribution overseas (Catling et al 1961(Catling et al , 1963Catling and Millet 1965). The results of these investigations were encouraging enough to justify the continuation of similar projects by the same analytical technique although in recent years more sophisticated methods like neutron activation analysis have been applied to related studies with considerable success ( A1 Kital et al 1969, Perlman and Asaro 1969, Asaro et al 1971.…”

Theban Stirrup‐jars: Questions and Answers

“…This is most clearly illustrated at Melos where in a geological setting almost without parallel in the rest of Greece we find the local (Late Cycladic) pottery has a composition without parallel. (This is composition Type I, as defined by Catling et al 1963. ) But, as we have repeatedly tried to show (see, for example, paragraph (D)) we are satisfied to demonstrate differences in the end-products that are significant in their distribution without feeling obliged to speculate on why the differences exist.…”