A Study of Pottery Production and Distribution in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus
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Middle Cypriot White Painted Ware: A Study of Pottery Production and Distribution in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus. by Laura Ann Campbell Gagné A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Art University of Toronto © Copyright by Laura Ann Campbell Gagné 2012 Middle Cypriot White Painted Ware: A Study of Pottery Production and Distribution in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus. Laura Ann Gagné, Doctor of Philosophy, Department of Art, University of Toronto, 2012 Abstract White Painted Ware, the most identifiable of pottery types of the Middle Bronze Age on Cyprus, has been studied by scholars either with the view to creating chronological typologies or to tracing trade routes. Little attention has been paid to the technology and social organization of production of this pottery. This thesis is concerned with the potters as much as with the pottery. The production sequence is examined from clay selection through to decoration of the vessels. An attempt is made to isolate production centres with unique methods of vessel construction as well as preferences for certain shapes and decorative schemes. Using petrographic analysis, different fabrics are isolated within the ware, and these are in turn related to the groups of vessels created based on style. Similar fabrics are used in multiple sites and most sites were found to have used multiple fabrics to create pottery that is considered to be part of the White Painted ware group. Beneath the major differences in styles between sites are several minor variations in construction method and decoration that are more likely to represent choices made by individual potters or small groups of potters working together. Based on vessel shape and decoration, seven distinct production centres appear to have been manufacturing White Painted ware on Cyprus over the course of the Middle Bronze Age. These were not operating simultaneously, but appear to have been active at the time that their regions were most prosperous, linking the production and use of White Painted ware with political and economic power. ii Acknowledgments Many people helped me through the process of creating this thesis. I wish to thank my first advisor, Sturt Manning, for introducing me to Cyprus and for starting me off on my studies. For getting me back on track and making a scholar out of me, I thank my current advisor, Carl Knappett. Thanks also to Peter Day and Patrick Quinn for teaching me petrography and to Sue Sherratt for making the sherds of the teaching collection at the University of Sheffield available to me. Many thanks are also due to Jill Hilditch for helping me with the petrography in the Aegean Material Culture Lab. Thanks also to my dissertation committee, Tim Harrison and Michael Chazan, for their insights and wisdom and their patience in reading through endless pages about Cyprus, and many thanks to Tim Harrison and Stan Klassen for allowing me to use the petrographic microscope in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. In addition, I would like to thank my external reader, Dr. Stuart Swiny, for his suggestions and constructive criticism. My thesis is a much better product as a result of his suggestions. I also wish to thank Dr. Pavlos Flourentzos and Dr. Maria Hadjicosti for allowing me to examine material in the Cyprus and Larnaca Museums and also for allowing me to take samples for petrographic analysis. Thanks also to the guards of the museums for their patience and kindness while I was working there, and the staff of the Geological Survey Department of Cyprus for producing thin sections for me. For allowing me to examine material from the Cornell Excavations at Lapithos, I wish to thank Dr. J. Coleman and also Lynn Green from the University of Pennsylvania Museum. No scholar working on Cyprus could succeed without the support of CAARI, both its hostel and its superb library. Thanks to Vathoulla Moustoukki, Diana Constantinides and Tom Davis for all their help. Many thanks also to Louise Maguire, Lindy Crewe and Jane Barlow for encouragement and advice. For their generous permission to use images from their publications in my appendices, I thank David Frankel, Jennifer Webb, Kjell Malmgren, Jane Barlow, John Coleman, Peter Fischer and Elizabet Åström (for permission to use the work of Paul Åström), Anne-Elizabeth Dunn-Vaturi, Lindy Crewe, Robert Laffineur, Basil Hennessy, Kristian Göransson (for the Swedish Cyprus Expedition), Ino Nicolaou, and the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus. I also thank my husband, Sylvain, for technical help and for cleaning up the numerous images in my appendix and for drawing my maps. The writing of the thesis would have been a most arduous task without the support of the Art History Dissertators group, particularly Alma Mikulinsky, Betsy Moss, Linda Stone and Amy Miller. To iii my friends Meg Morden, Sally Stewart, and Joe and Maria Shaw, I owe a huge debt of gratitude for advice, encouragement and support. Finally, there is no way I could have done any of this without the love, support and encouragement of my husband, Sylvain and my two children, Stephen and Jessica. I dedicate this tome to them. iv Table of Contents Abstract............................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................ iii Table of Contents............................................................................................. v List of Tables...................................................................................................... xvii List of Figures…………………………………………............................................… xxii List of Maps………………………………………………............................................. ciii List of Appendices………………………………………........................................... civ List of Captions.................................................................................................. cv Chapter 1 – Introduction 1.1 The Cypriot Middle Bronze Age............................................................................ 1 1.2 General Overview................................................................................................... 4 Chapter 2- Problem Orientation 2.1 Introduction.......................................................................................................... 8 2.2.1 Transition to the Early Bronze Age.................................................................... 11 2.3 Philia Culture........................................................................................................ 13 2.3.1 Settlement and Subsistence................................................................. 13 2.3.2 Burials................................................................................................... 16 2.3.3 Metallurgy............................................................................................ 17 2.3.4 Pottery................................................................................................... 18 2.4 The Early Bronze Age............................................................................................ 22 2.4.1 Settlement and Subsistence................................................................... 25 2.4.2 Burials................................................................................................... 27 2.4.3 Metallurgy............................................................................................. 27 2.4.4 Pottery.................................................................................................. 28 v 2.5 The Middle Bronze Age....................................................................................... 29 2.5.1 Settlement and Subsistence................................................................. 31 2.5.2 Burials................................................................................................... 32 2.5.3 Metallurgy............................................................................................ 32 2.5.4 Pottery.................................................................................................. 33 2.6 Summary............................................................................................................. 34 2.7 Traditional Approaches to the Study of Cypriot Ceramics................................... 37 2.7.1 Early Classifications of Cypriot Bronze Age Ceramics....................................... 37 2.7.2 Seriation........................................................................................................... 38 2.7.3 Regional Variation Considered......................................................................... 39 2.7.4 Chemical Analyses............................................................................................ 42 2.7.5 Petrographic Analyses...................................................................................... 44 2.8 Summary............................................................................................................. 47 2.9 Conclusion........................................................................................................... 48 Chapter 3 – Methodology 3.1 Introduction........................................................................................................ 50 3.2 Ethnographic studies of traditional Cypriot Potters.......................................... 53 3.3 The transmission