Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-zzh7m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T12:30:54.477Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An Early Cypriot III Vase from the Palace at Knossos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

H.W. Catling  and
J.A. MacGillivray
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Fragments of a vase, now in the Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos, from the excavations of Sir Arthur Evans (south-east Kamares Area, Dove Pit) are identified as Early Cypriot. Cypriot parallels are described from Bellapais, Vounous, and Lapithos. The vase is classed as EC IIIB/MC I, its Minoan context EM III/MM IA. A brief review is given of evidence for Minoan-Cypriot contact at the turn of the third and second millennia B.C.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 78 , November 1983 , pp. 1 - 8
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

The following abbreviations are employed in addition to those in normal use:

Arch Archaeologia, or Miscellaneous Tracts relating to Antiquity (London, Society of Antiquaries).

NCS Acts of the International Archaeological Symposium: ‘The Relations between Cyprus and Crete, circa 2000–500 BC’ (Nicosia 1979).

1 The discovery was made by MacGillivray, the identification confirmed by Catling. This account is a summary of our joint thinking, where MacGillivray's contribution may have been more Minoan, Catling's more Cypriot. Elizabeth Catling drew the vase, Sheila Raven photographed it.

2 Both sites have been extensively excavated. For Vounous, see Dikaios, P. in Arch 88 (1938) 1–174Google Scholar; Schaeffer, C. F. A., ‘Les Découvertes dans la nécrople de Vounous de l'ancien âge du Bronze’ in Missions en Chypre 1932–1935 (Paris 1936) 26–48 and 122–34Google Scholar; , E. and Stewart, J., Vounous 1937–38 (Lund 1950).Google Scholar For Lapithos, Sjöqvist, E., ‘Lapithos, the Necropolis at Vrysi tou Barba’ in SCE i 33–162Google Scholar; Grace, V., ‘A Cypriote Tomb and Minoan Evidence for its Date’ in AJA 44 (1940) 10–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar: Myres, J. L., ‘A Bronze Age Cemetery in Cyprus’, pp. 78–85Google Scholar in ‘Excavations in Cyprus 1913’ in BSA 41 (1940–5) 53–96; Herscher, Ellen, ‘The Bronze Age Cemetery at Lapithos, Vrysi tou Barba, Cyprus’, Doctoral dissertation for the University of Pennsylvania, 1978 (University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor).Google Scholar

3 SCE iv 1a 384–9.

4 Arch 88 pl. l 10.

5 Vounous 1937–38 312 and pl. xxxvii.

6 Ibid. 334 and pl. xxxix.

7 SCE i 44 and pl. xvi, second row, second from left.

8 Ibid. 61 and pl. xviii 1, top row, third from left. SCE iv 1a pl. cx 14.

9 SCE i 69 and pl. xix 5, third row, far left. SCE iv 1a pl. cx 15.

10 SCE i 73 and pl. xx 1, second row, far left.

11 Ibid. 103 and pl. xxviii, top, second from right; pl. xcvii, bottom left. SCE iv 1a pl. cx 17.

12 SCE i 103 and pl. xxxviii, top, third from left. SCE iv 1a pl. cxi 1.

13 SCE i 153 and pl. xxxviii, bottom, top row, second left. SCE iv 1a pl. cxi 9.

14 AJA 44 (1940) 36 and pl. x.

15 Ibid.

16 Herscher, op. cit. (n. 2 above) 339. The piece is illustrated by Herscher, in her ‘New Light from Lapithos’ in The Archaeology of Cyprus: Recent developments (New Jersey 1975) 47 and fig. 11.Google Scholar

17 Arch 88 pl. li 1 (= Vounous T 19, 4), 3 (T 9, 51), 8 (= T 12, 49), and 9 (= T 7, 30).

18 The relatively straightforward accounts originally given by the pioneers- Myres, J. L. in Myres, and Richter, , Catalogue of the Cyprus Museum (Oxford 1899)Google Scholar and Handbook of the Cesnola Collection of Antiquities from Cyprus (New York 1914) and Gjerstad, E., Studies on Prehistoric Cyprus (Uppsala 1926)Google Scholar—had, in the light of more intensive study— Åström, P., The Middle Cypriote Bronze Age (Lund 1957)Google Scholar, republished in 1970 as SCE iv Ib, and Stewart, J. R., ‘The Early Cypriote Bronze Age’ in SCE iv 1a205–401Google Scholar — to make way for more sophisticated, less confident analyses. In their extreme form, these analyses seemed to imply an inextricable interlocking of much of the late Early Bronze Age with the Middle Bronze Age. Merrillees, R. S. has summarized the development outlined above in his Introduction to the Bronze Age Archaeology of Cyprus (Göteborg 1978).Google Scholar

19 To the standard views set out in SCE iv 1b 163–203, 257–73 (by definition, superseding earlier discussions) should be added Mellaart, J., ‘A Note on Cypriote Early Bronze Age Chronology’ in RDAC (1974) 38–42Google Scholar; Merrillees, R. S., ‘The Absolute Chronology of the Bronze Age in Cyprus’ in RDAC (1977) 33–50Google Scholar; Saltz, D. S., ‘The Chronology of the Middle Cypriote Bronze Age’ in RDAC (1977) 51–69Google Scholar; Gjerstad, E., ‘The Origin and Chronology of the Early Bronze Age’ in RDAC (1980) 1–16Google Scholar; and Kehrberg, I., ‘Early and Middle Cypriote Chronology Again’ in Levant 14 (1982) 59–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 First published by Grace, V., AJA 44 10–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Catling, H. W. and Karageorghis, V., ‘Minoika in Cyprus’ in BSA 55 (1960) 108–27Google Scholar, especially 109–10.

21 The problems of classifying the contents of T 806A have been well summarized by Åström, P., ‘The Find Contexts of some Minoan Objects in Crete’ in NCS 56–62, especially 56–8.Google Scholar He is clearly in favour of retaining all the contents of the Tomb within an EC III framework, with the exception of the obviously intrusive MC II burial.

22 Stewart, J. R., ‘The Tomb of the Seafarer at Karmi’ in OpAth 4 (1963) 197 ff.Google Scholar

23 n. 27 below.

24 Andreou, S., ‘Pottery Groups of the Old Palace Period in Crete’, Doctoral dissertation for the University of Cincinnati (1978) 20–1 fig. 1, 14–16.Google Scholar

25 MacKenzie, , JHS 23 (1903) 167 fig. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; JHS 26 (1906) 252, no. 1.

26 Hood, M. S. F., ‘Stratigraphical Excavations at Knossos 1957–61’ in KCh (1961–1962) 93Google Scholar; Andreou, op. cit. (n. 24 above) 25.

27 NCS 59 n. 32.

28 JHS 26 256, pl. viii.

29 PM i 145–6 fig. 106.

30 BSA 6 (1899–1900) 7.

31 BSA 8 (1901–2) 106–9.

32 BSA (1902–3) 17–19.

33 PM i 146, 172–3; JHS 26 246.

34 JHS 26 pls. vii, ix.

35 JHS 23 pls. vi 4, vii; JHS 26 244, 256.

36 Pendlebury, J. D. S. and others, Knossos. Dating the Pottery in the Stratigraphical Museum 2 15.Google Scholar

37 ‘Byblite daggers in Cyprus and Crete’ in AJA 70 (1966) 123 ff.

38 ‘Cyprus, the Cyclades and Crete in the Early to Middle Bronze Ages’ in NCS 8–55.

39 Merrillees (ibid. 23–4), speaking of our Minoan metal objects in Cyprus, says: ‘In any case no attempt has been made to establish definitely their relative chronologies in the countries of their production and disposal. …’ This is not so, certainly in the case of Vounous T 19, 89, of whose place in the Minoan sequence Pendlebury had a good deal to tell Dikaios—Arch 88 137. And there is not much doubt of the dagger's Cypriot context.

40 Branigan (n. 37 above) suggests that the use of grooves instead of ridges to enliven the midrib is a Byblite rather than a Minoan trait.

41 Catling and Karageorghis, op. cit. (n. 20 above) 112 no. 8. See Branigan, op. cit. (no. 37 above).

42 Branigan, , Copper and Bronze Working in Early Bronze Age Crete, SIMA 29 (1968) 16, 61.Google Scholar

43 Ibid. 13–14, 61.

44 Bosanquet, and Dawkins, , The Unpublished Objects from the Palaikastro Excavations 116 pl. 24 D, E.Google Scholar

45 Andreou, op. cit. (n. 24 above) 25.

46 AJA 70 123.

47 Catling and Karageorghis, op. cit. (n. 20 above); Cadogan, G., ‘Cypriot Objects in the Bronze Age Aegean and their Importance’ in Acta 1st International Congress of Cypriot Studies (Nicosia 1972) 15–13Google Scholar; Merrillees, R. S. ‘Cypriote Relations with the Bronze Age Aegean’ in his Trade and Transcendence in the Bronze Age Levant (Göteborg 1974) 5–11Google Scholar; Cadogan, G., ‘Cyprus and Crete c. 2000–1400 B.C.’ in NCS 63–8Google Scholar; Åström, P., ‘The Find Contexts of some Minoan objects in Cyprus’ in NCS 56–62.Google Scholar

48 Coldstream, J. N. and Huxley, G. L., Kythera (London 1972) 275–80.Google Scholar For Ialysos, ibid. 95. For Minoan pottery in Egypt now see Kemp, B. J. and Merrillees, R. S., Minoan Pottery in 2nd Millennium Egypt (Mainz 1980)Google Scholar with earlier bibliography.

49 Merrillees, op. cit. (n. 38 above).

50 ADelt 22 (1967) Mel. 71, 74, figs. 4, 5. The proto-duck-vases are fig. 5, 1 and 2; a third, unpublished, is displayed in the Ermoupolis Museum, Syros.

51 The duck-vase from the Izmir Museum (possibly found at Bozüyük), illustrated in Lloyd, S. and Mellaart, J., Beyce Sultan I (London 1962) 214 fig. P53 no. 2Google Scholar and referred to by Merrillees, op. cit. (n. 38 above) 30–1, seems more closely related to the Cypriot duck–vases than the Cycladic series.

52 ‘Two Cypriot Sherds from Crete’ in BSA 58 (1963) 89–93.

53 Cadogan, op. cit. (n. 47 above, ad init.) 5, with references.

54 See, for instance, Catling, H. W., Cyprus and the West 1600–1050 B.C. (Sheffield 1980) 14Google Scholar and references.

55 NCS 68.