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The Cypriot and Syrian Pottery from Al Mina, Syria1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Joan Du Plat Taylor
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Extract

Cypriot pottery of the Iron Age can now be dated much more closely through sites which have been published from north Palestine, notably Megiddo, Samaria and Hazor, and also from trial excavations which have been undertaken in Syria. Yet further east the excavations at Nimrud help to fill the picture. These sites again throw light on the early levels at Al Mina, for though Professor Gjerstad inspected the Cypriot material, no specific report was made upon it.

In this paper, the Cypriot and Syrian pottery will be examined in detail with special reference to the collection of sherds which were handed over to the University of London, Institute of Archaeology, by the British Museum at Sir Leonard Woolley's behest. The writer is indebted to him for making it available. In the light of the comparative material, an endeavour will be made to clarify the position of the early levels at Al Mina with regard to other sites in the Near East and also to establish a chronological sequence, and to determine its bearing on the dating of the Greek pottery.

When Sir Leonard Woolley published his reports in 1935–36 on the excavations at Al Mina (J.H.S., LVIII (1938), 1–30, 133–70; A.J., XVII (1937), 1ff.), he stressed the importance of the Cypriot pottery from the occupation of Levels VIII–VI. In subsequent studies (J.H.S., LIX, 1ff.; LX, 1ff.; Boardman B.S.A. 52 (1957) 1ff.) only the Greek pottery was examined.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , Spring 1959 , pp. 62 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1959

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Footnotes

page 62 note 1

This paper has been prepared with the aid of a grant from the Central Research Fund of the University of London, to whom the writer is much indebted. She is also grateful to Mrs. J. M. Birmingham for notes and information on material in the Antioch Museum, which it was not possible to revisit and from Tarsus. Mr. George Hanfmann has also kindly supplied information on material from the latter site.

References

page 62 note 2 A few other Cypriot sherds in the Ashmolean Museum have been included through the kindness of Mr. John Boardman.

page 73 note 1 The drawing has been prepared from a field sketch, as the whereabouts of the amphora is not known, though it is probably in Antioch.

page 85 note 1 I follow Dr. Kenyon's dating.

page 91 note 1 See now Boardman, BSA 52 (1957), 5ffGoogle Scholar. where he suggests they were Euboeans.

page 91 note 2 The evidence for the earliest occupation in the neighbourhood of Al Mina is still tenuous, but in addition to the stray finds noted by Sir Leonard Woolley (JHS LXVIII, 148), an unstratified rim sherd of a Late Bronze Age crater, similar to those from Megiddo stratum VII (II, pl 68, 14), 1300–1100 B.C., is in the collection of the Institute of Archaeology.