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Cyprus and the East Mediterranean
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The tragic invasion of the island in 1974 forced the abandon of the Aghia Irini (Kyrenia) archaeological site by the Italian Archaeological mission of the ISMEA-CNR (Institute for Mycenaean and Aegean Anatolian studies of the Italian National Council for Researches) that ceased any field activity in Cyprus, even if some researchers of the ISMEA-CNR, including the writer, carried on personal investigations on Cyprus archaeological material conserved in Cypriot and foreign Museums and private institutions. In 1985, in the frame of the renewed interest of the ISMEA-CNR on Cyprus prehistory, my first investigation regarded a Middle Bronze age Red Polished amphora from Pyrgos Tomb 16: n°17, which had drawn my attention to the peculiar plastic decoration on the body, resembling an Anatolian idol. After the publication of the amphora T.16: 17, prof. Vassos Karageorghis, Director of the Department of the Antiquities of Cyprus welcomed my request to study the unpublished material of the Early-Middle Bronze age found in the rescue excavated tombs of Pyrgos sending me his approval. The Tomb 13 was not included as its material belongs to the Classic period. Later the permission to study the Pyrgos tombs was formalized by official letters exchanged between the Direction of the ISMEA-CNR and the Department of the Antiquities of Cyprus. The last permission for Tomb 21 was issued by Dr. Demos Christou as Director of the Department of the Antiquities of Cyprus. Considering the importance and number of objects found in Tomb 21, it will be the subject of a specific publication in “Scripta Cipria”, including comparisons with the material from Pyrgos/Mavroraki excavations and the Corpus of Pyrgos Middle Bronze age pottery. Following the first acquisition of the data from the register books, with the kind assistance of the technicians of the Limassol district Museum, Michael Odysseas and Demos Theodorou, the documentation of the material was performed at the expense of the ISMEA-CNR by Italian and Cypriot specialists: Elias Markou, Polycarpos Procopiou, Sylvie Hartman, and Antonio Mancini, to them and the entire staff of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus I address my personal thanks for their extraordinary assistance and collaboration. As the material was not photographed in digital form, the colours of photos deteriorated, and for some it was preferred to publish the black and white.
4.1 RED POLISHED MOTTLED
The Red Polished Mottled ware is the most represented pottery found in Early Bronze age Pyrgos tombs.
This ceramic class has recently been studied and examined, from the structural,compositional, traditional and a chronological point of view by G. Georgiou J.M. Webb and D. Frankel on the occasion of the publication of the Early Bronze age Psematismenos Trelloukkas cemetery, with more attention to the possible and long disputed connection of this pottery with the Vasilikì ware of Crete (Betancourt 1979), which appears approximately in the same period, between the end of the Neolithic and the Early Bronze age.
They report all previous interpretations of this peculiar Cypriot bichromate pottery, that in various ways characterizes the ceramic production of the Early Bronze age, including information on its distribution on the island, and concluding that: “There can be little doubt that mottling was viewed as a form of surface decoration and that conditions were deliberately created during firing to ensure this
outcome” (Psematismenos: 282).
Nevertheless, we have not to forget that the red polished pottery with black fire-marks (spots, or large areas) on the surface, appears and disappears in many circum-Mediterranean locations (Sagona: 1984), including Crete, Cyprus, central Anatolia (Palumbi: 2003, 2008 Frangipane & Palumbi: 2007), Jordan, Egypt (Sowada: 1994) and Nubia (Brome Weigall: 2015), Sicily, Aeolian Islands (Fragnoli 2012), Maltese archipelago (Tanasi & Vella: 2011), Sardinia (Campus Leonelli: 2000; Vinci: 2004, 25-26-27-28), and Balearic archipelago (Bernardini: 2007), mostly marking the beginning of the Bronze Age, with absolute different chronologies according to the places.
Its most recent occurrence concerns the Canary Islands pottery of the first millennium BC, which excluding for the chronological gap any possible Mediterranean suggestions (Peña 2008), and in view of the fact that it appears at the end of the Neolithic period, advises that this bi-chromatic peculiarity is connected not only to the quality of the clay, to intentions of the potter (Del Pino Curbelo 2013, 125) and the firing method, but it could be a characteristic cultural step occurring at the end of the Neolithic period, how that it is dating from the present.
Recreations of Andreas Fasoulides and the firing made at Pyrgos Mavroraki.
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