United in our differences: The production and consumption of pottery at EM IB Phaistos, Crete

Ophiolites Associated with Pottery Production in Bronze Age Crete

“…The idea for producing this joint paper arose from some archaeometric results obtained by Florence Liard in the frame of her PhD research at the Université Catholique de Louvain, conducted under direction of Profs. Jan Driessen and Charlotte Langohr (AegIS research group), and funded by the National Fund for Scientific Research in Belgium (2011-2015. We would like to thank all the scholars, institutions and funding bodies that contributed to the completion of this research.…”

“…Since then, however, several variants of the Myrtos ophiolite‐tempered fabrics have been identified by ceramic petrologists, not only regionally (Nodarou , ) but also in the Messara (Day, Relaki, and Faber, ; Mentesana et al . ; Nodarou ) and in north‐central Crete (Boileau and Whitley ; Liard forthcoming). Therefore, production and trade patterns of ophiolite‐bearing pottery have proven to be much more complex than originally thought, with several potential workshops distributed across Crete.…”

“…The observation of coarse beach sands displaying a range of ophiolitic lithologies on the south-eastern coast of Crete, between Keratokambos and Myrtos Pyrgos, combined with archaeological evidence for pottery production at Myrtos Fournou Koriphi during at least the Early Bronze Age, have for long encapsulated the idea of a site-type pottery fabric (Whitelaw et al 1997;Poursat and Knappett 2005). Since then, however, several variants of the Myrtos ophiolite-tempered fabrics have been identified by ceramic petrologists, not only regionally (Nodarou 2007(Nodarou , 2015a but also in the Messara (Day, Relaki, and Faber, 2006;Mentesana et al 2015;Nodarou 2015b) and in north-central Crete (Boileau and Whitley 2010;Liard forthcoming). Therefore, production and trade patterns of ophiolite-bearing pottery have proven to be much more complex than originally thought, with several potential workshops distributed across Crete.…”

Ceramic analysis in Greece

“…As ceramic analysis has become a greater part of archaeological investigation over the years, the potential to achieve diachronic characterization for long-lived production or consumption centres has increased enormously. The relationship between ceramic change and societal development is explored in Roberta Mentesana and colleagues' diachronic study of production and consumption of pottery at prehistoric Phaistos, Crete (Mentesana et al 2016). Focusing on the transition between Final Neolithic and Early Minoan I levels traditionally associated with major changes in the ceramic repertoire, the chaînes opératoires of three different wares -dark-on-light, dark-grey pattern burnished (DGPB) and cooking-pot wares -were reconstructed using an integrated programme of macroscopic, petrographic and microstructural analyses.…”

Microstructural, Mineralogical and Petrographical Characteristics of the Medieval Ceramics from the Studenica Monastery (UNESCO World Heritage Site): Implications on the Pottery Technology and Provenance of The Raw Material

“…A similar approach was applied by many authors (e.g., Breakmans et al, 2011; Ionescu & Hoeck, 2011; De Vito et al, 2015; Charalambidou et al, 2016; Fishman, 2016; Kreiter et al, 2017). In addition, we apply a set of mineralogical and petrographical analyses that are standard methods in ceramics investigations in order to: (a) separate local from possibly imported items (Tite, 2008; Breakmans et al, 2011), (b) define technological aspects of ceramic production (e.g., Lapuente & Pérez-Arantegui, 1999; Day et al, 2006; Menelaou et al, 2016; Mentesana et al, 2016, and references therein), and (c) establish the origin of raw material used for production of the studied ceramics (Whitelaw et al, 1997; Hilditch, 2007, 2013; Barone et al, 2010; Damjanović et al, 2014, among others).…”