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A Late Helladic IIIC Vase in Birmingham
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2013
Extract
I publish illustrations here of a Mycenaean vase that has for long been in the possession of the Department of Archaeology in the City of Birmingham Museum. It entered that collection in 1885 as part of a group of pottery found in Cyprus, without further details of source. All the rest of the material is certainly of Cypriot origin, and there must be a very strong presumption that our vase was found there, too. Since it belongs to a class of Mycenaean pottery of which very little has been reported from Cyprus, and is also of some little intrinsic interest, it seems appropriate that it should be more widely known. The vase may be described as follows:
Birmingham accession no. 1369/85. Stirrup jar, complete and intact. Ht. 0·25 m., diam. 0·203 m. Furumark would call the shape ‘globular-conical’ and ‘perked-up’. Shoulders and belly are spherical, but the lower walls straighten somewhat toward the foot. The clay is light buff in tone, with some inclusions, well fired, and has a smooth yellowish surface finish. The paint is rich brown to dark brown in colour, matt, and rather streaky on the solid areas; brush strokes are very evident. The spout is of concave profile, with wide mouth that has a well-formed bead lip; it just tops the disc of the false-neck, almost touching it. The broad handles are rather narrowly set on the shoulder. In the middle of the disc of the false-neck is a prominent plastic nipple, pierced before firing, that acts as air-hole. The bevelled foot is well proportioned. There is paint on the lip of the spout, whose root, as well as the root of the false-neck and the roots of the handles, is outlined with paint.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1972
References
1 I am very grateful to Mr. Nicholas Thomas, Director of the City Museum, Bristol, who, as Keeper of the Department of Archaeology in the City of Birmingham Museum, agreed to my request for permission to publish this vase. I am also grateful to Mr. John Ruffle, of the City of Birmingham Museum, for help, and to Mr. Paul Halstead of Magdalene College, Cambridge, who as a Student Assistant in Birmingham first brought the vase to my attention. I have been greatly helped by discussion of the vase with Mr. V. R. Desborough. I am indebted to Miss Cicely Davies for the drawings from which FIG. I was prepared, and to Miss Olive Godwin, of the Photographic Department of the Ashmolean Museum, for the photographs reproduced on plate 13.
2 MP 31 fig. 6 and p. 613.
3 Iakovides, S., Perati: The Cemetery ii (in Greek) 153Google Scholar.
4 Desborough, V. R., Last Mycenaeans and their Successors (LMS) 271–2Google Scholar.
5 Asine 361, fig. 264.
6 MP 282 ff. and see OpAth v (1965) 1–6Google Scholar.
7 e.g. Perati ii. 157Google Scholar fig. 26 nos. 15 and 16.
8 e.g. op. cit. 187 fig. 73 nos. 569 and 1210.
9 Ibid. 182 fig. 66, 183 fig. 67, 185 fig. 71 and examples from Kos, Ann. xxvii–xxviii (1965–1966) 33Google Scholar fig. 5, and 60 fig. 32.
10 Perati ii. 125–6Google Scholar.
11 LMS pl. 3c.
12 Mycenaean—e.g. Perati ii. 173Google Scholar fig. 57 no. 567. Minoan—e.g. BSA lxiii (1968) 119Google Scholar fig. 6 nos. 25 and 30.
13 MP 376, Mot. 55 and fig. 65.
14 MV pl. xxxiii nos. 320 and 321.
15 Perati ii. 407–10Google Scholar.
16 Perati pl. 99γ.
17 PAE 1959, pl. 157 no. 6.
18 Ann. xxvii–xxviii 33 fig. 5Google Scholar.
19 e.g. Gjerstad, in OpArch iii (1944) 73 ff.Google Scholar, Furumark, op. cit. 194 ff., Desborough, , LMS 22–8Google Scholar.
20 See LMS 23–4 and cf. OpArch iii. 211 fig. 4Google Scholar.
21 Perati ii. 413–16Google Scholar.
22 Catling, , CBMW 222–3Google Scholar.
23 For instance, the ‘goddess with upraised arms’—BCH lxxxiii (1959) 340Google Scholar fig. 4, from Morphou, repeated in Spiteris, Art of Cyprus (1970) 86Google Scholar.
24 OpArch iii. 265Google Scholar, where Furumark lends his authority to the view that Rhodian and Cretan elements must have been present among the later colonists reaching Cyprus.