The significant few. Miniature pottery from the Sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia

Abstract

Miniature pottery is omnipresent in the ancient Greek world, especially in sanctuaries, from the Prehistoric to the Hellenistic period. This article will present and discuss a significant absence of miniature pottery in one of the best-known sanctuaries in Greece, the Sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia during the Archaic period. The reasons behind this scarcity are at one level clearly related to the pan-Hellenic character of the sanctuary. However, by comparing the assemblages at Olympia with other sanctuaries, largely in the Peloponnese, it becomes clear that the roles of miniature pottery may be quite complex. This absence in at least some pan-Hellenic contexts, in combination with the kinds of shapes that are most common in particular assemblages, suggests that miniature pottery has significance that goes beyond the ‘votive’, as traditionally construed by Classical archaeologists, to include commemorative and possibly ritual roles.

Keywords:

• Miniature pottery
• Olympia
• dedications
• Archaic
• Zeus

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Reinhard Senff and Ulrich Sinn for giving me permission to work on the miniature pottery from Olympia and Kombothekra, and Joachim Heiden and Jürgen Schilbach for stimulating conversations about Olympia and its cult and pottery. The research stays in Olympia were made possible by the Elisabeth Munksgaard Foundation and the Svend Fiedler and Wife Foundation, who sponsored my work and stay at Olympia in April 2012 and 2013, and the Danish Institute in Athens provided a room in Athens in 2010 when I first went to Olympia. I also want to thank Lin Foxhall for her invaluable support and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Signe Barfoed

Signe Barfoed has a BA in Classical Archaeology from Copenhagen, and an MA in Classics from the University of Cincinnati. She has worked at archaeological projects in Greece, Italy, Turkey, Ukraine, Denmark and Spain. She has been part of the Danish Institute at Athens’ project in Kalydon since 2011, and since 2013 she has been in charge of the finds registration. Her main research interests are centred around religious behaviour, but also trade, colonization and production based on pottery analyses are of her interest. She is currently working on her PhD thesis with the working title: ‘Miniaturization and Materiality: The Ritual Significance of Miniature Pottery Votives in Ancient Greek Sanctuaries’. The main question of this dissertation is: what role did miniaturization play in the sanctuaries and the rituals in ancient Greek society? The argument will be constructed around the issue of whether miniature objects were believed to have distinct material qualities. They were too small to be functional: would that have made them more appropriate for the realms outside everyday human life, such as sanctuaries, that is the realm of the immortal gods?