The Source Provenance of Bronze Age and Roman pottery from Cyprus

Abstract

Archaeological interpretations of ancient economies have been strengthened by chemical analyses of ceramics, which provide the clearest evidence for economic activity, and comprise both the objects of exchange and its means. Pottery is often manufactured from local materials, but its compositional diversity typically prevents significant patterns of resource utilization from being identified. Centrally located and positioned on traditional shipping routes, Cyprus maintained ties with and supplied a variety of distinctive ceramic products to the major commercial centres in the eastern Mediterranean throughout Antiquity. We analysed two Cypriot fine wares and a variety of utilitarian pottery, as well as samples of extant Cypriot clays to determine source provenance. These chemical analyses provide an objective indication of the origins of ancient (Bronze Age and Roman) ceramics manufactured on Cyprus. The distribution of the probable clay sources and the links between pottery style and the material environment also afford a perspective on the spatial organization of large-scale pottery production on the island. Compositional analysis provides the means to assemble geographies of pottery production and to unravel the interregional system of exchange that operated in Antiquity, but the ability to accomplish these tasks is predicated on systematic analyses of ceramic products and raw materials that are found far beyond the bounds of individual archaeological sites.

Using neutron activation analysis to identify scales of interaction at Kinet Höyük, Turkey

“…4d 1e4). The typological and compositional homogeneity of KH4 (highest relative scandium concentrations of the sample with generally lower Table 3 The Kinet NAA dataset organized into four principal compositional groups and their major subsets giving group identification, number of samples in each group, average value and % coefficient of variation (CV) concentrations of trace elements and rare earths) best match NAA results for LBA white slipped ceramics and geological sediments from the southern region of the Troodos massif that dominates the central western region of Cyprus (Gomez et al, 2002).…”

Integrated geological, petrologic and geochemical approach to establish source material and technology of Late Cypriot Bronze Age Plain White ware ceramics

“…The slightly lower amounts of trace elements in the sediments correlate with the larger shell-fragments that are sporadically included in the sediment and which were not removed before bulk analysis. Comparing average REE concentrations of Group A sherds to the mean REE contents of 38 Corinthian-style roof tiles derived from Mesaoria sediments around Enkomi (Gomez et al, 2002), shows very similar REE concentrations; La in the roof tiles reaches 17.79 ppm (std. dev.…”

Lead isotopic analysis within a multiproxy approach to trace pottery sources. The example of White Slip II sherds from Late Bronze Age sites in Cyprus and Syria

“…Among the questions commonly raised, that of their provenance often requires the use of a multiproxy approach. Elemental analyses are indeed widely and successfully applied to trace pottery origins (e.g., Knapp and Cherry, 1994;Gomez et al, 2002;Mommsen, 2003;Kennett et al, 2004;Asaro and Adan-Bayewitz, 2007;Ben-Shlomo et al, 2007;Tschegg et al, 2008Tschegg et al, , 2009. A recent study established that Pb isotope analysis, so far rarely considered for this purpose, constitutes an efficient tool to identify pottery sources.…”