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Materials & Wares
Bronze Age Pots and Potters |
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In the Bronze Age Cypriot potters supplied the island's practical needs for cooking, serving and storage containers. Working without a fast wheel (which only came into use at the end of the Bronze Age), they fashioned hand-built vessels in a range of rounded forms. They imitated the shapes of gourds, which is unsurprising, since gourds themselves were used as containers, as well as shapes found in other organic materials. | |||
| Cypriot potters were also artisans who exercised considerable imagination in their craft. Their wares were always interesting, often exuberant, sometimes experimental and even outlandish. Since pottery was produced in small batches by individuals or families rather than by factories, idiosyncrasy rather than uniformity was the rule. Pottery was also discernibly regionalized, varying from place to place on the island. This makes the Bronze Age pottery of Cyprus among the most diverse found anywhere in the ancient world. | ||||
| Today archaeologists appreciate ancient pottery
not only for its aesthetic quality (though this clearly exists),
but for its usefulness as a gauge of chronology. Changes in ceramic form
and decoration over time are organized into typologies which align distinctive
forms and decorations with approximate chronological ranges. Thus, for
instance, a tomb can be dated by the types of pottery found in it.
Virtually all of the pottery from the Cesnola Collection displayed here was taken intact from tombs. The accompanying tomb plans illustrate how tomb shapes as well as pottery changed during the 1500-year span of the Cypriot Bronze Age. |
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