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Contribution to Book
Cypriot Pottery
Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.
  • Nicolle E Hirschfeld, Trinity University
Document Type
Contribution to Book
Publication Date
1-1-2008
Disciplines
Abstract

At least 3 of the 10 pithoi (large ceramic transport containers) stowed on the ship that sank at Uluburun contained Cypriot pottery: Bucchero jugs, lug-handled bowls, milk bowls, Base Ring bowls and a single juglet, White Shaved juglets, lamps, and wall brackets—about 140 pieces in total, excluding the pithoi. The Uluburun shipment and the ceramic cargo jettisoned off Point Iria on the Greek mainland a century later are the only extant excavated direct archaeological evidence for the transport of pottery in the eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age. These examples of ceramics-in-transport are highly significant for what they tell us about how pottery was procured and organized for shipment. This, in turn, is important because archaeologists often view imported ceramics as significant indicators of exchange and chronological synchronization.

Editor
Joan Aruz, Kim Benzel & Jean M. Evans
Publisher
Metropolitan Museum of Art
ISBN
9781588392954
Citation Information
Hirschfeld, N. (2008). Cypriot pottery. In J. Aruz, K. Benzel, & J. M. Evans (Eds.), Beyond Babylon: Art, trade, and diplomacy in the second millennium B.C. (pp. 321-323). Metropolitan Museum of Art.