The Kelenderis pottery workshop(s): newly identified agents in East Mediterranean maritime exchange networks in the Achaemenid period

Abstract

During the Persian (or Achaemenid) period, simply band-painted bowls, plates, jugs, table amphorae and hydriae are documented in the Levant — in particular in the coastal regions — as one of the most common groups of decorated ceramics. Vessels of this style — mostly drinking vessels — were recorded in significant quantities at most coastal sites in southern Turkey, Syria, Israel, Cyprus, and occasionally also in Egypt. The band-painted decoration resembles East Greek styles and initial studies identified these vessels as variations of East Greek ceramics imported to the eastern Mediterranean from Ionian cities. In this study, we examined a large sample of this pottery from the northern and southern Levant, both stylistically and by fabric analysis, applying Neutron Activation Analyses (NAA), Wavelength Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence (WD-XRF) and petrography. We demonstrate that almost all the vessels of this particular, and popular, style were produced at one site only — Kelenderis, in Cilicia — which during the Persian period distributed its merchandise extensively to large parts of the eastern Mediterranean. The newly identified Mediterranean NAA group was labelled ‘Kelenderis A’ (KelA). The results require a reconsideration of commercial and other Mediterranean interconnections during this period.

Keywords:

• Levantine Archaeology
• Persian/Achaemenid period
• Neutron Activation Analysis and XRF pottery analysis
• Mediterranean archaeology
• ancient pottery

Acknowledgements

Research for this study was funded by Israel Science Foundation Grant no. 570/09 awarded to Gilboa and Lehmann, and no. 237/14 granted to Lehmann, and by PhD scholarships awarded to Shalev by the Research Authority of the University of Haifa and the Nathan Rotenstreich Foundation in Jerusalem. We would like to thank Professor Levent Zoroğlu for his advice and support. Pottery from Al Mina was sampled through the generosity and co-operation of museums and curators in Britain: The British Museum (Alexandra Villing); University College London (Rachael Sparks); and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Jack Green). Marie-Henriette Gates generously allowed us access to material from her excavations at Kinet Höyük. The following scholars and institutions in Israel granted us permission to sample pottery in their collections: the Israel Antiquities Authority, especially Michael Saban and Deborah Ben-Ami; Nimrod Getzov and Yoav Lerer (Nahariya); Ezra Marcus (Tel ʽAkko, Area F, in the framework of a project funded by the White-Levy Program for Archaeological Publications); Avshalom Zemer and the National Maritime Museum at Haifa (Shiqmona); Samuel Wolff (Tel Megadim); Ilan Sharon and S. Rebecca Martin (Dor co-directors); Orit Tzuf (Jaffa); Dan Master and Joshua Walton (Ashkelon). The help of the staff of the research reactor of the Reactor Institute Delft irradiating the samples is thankfully acknowledged. Finally, we acknowledge the contribution of comments by two anonymous reviewers, who indeed helped us to improve the paper.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data can be accessed here: http://doi.org/10.1080/00758914.2020.1772633.

Notes

1 First suggested by Barnett (1939–40) and followed by Ploug (1973: 38–40); Risser and Blakely (1989: 93–95); Stern (1978: 41); (1989); Nodet (1980: 126); Marchese (1989: 146–47); Mook and Coulson (1995: 93–94).

2 Coldstream (1981: 22); Taylor (1980: 171).

3 Parallel to this examination, Persian-period Greek amphorae in the Levant (mostly East Greek) were also sampled, but this component of our research is not part of the present paper. For the results see, provisionally, Shalev (2014).

4 Three more samples, of table amphorae from Dor, were also examined by WD-XRF. They clearly belonged to the other fabric group mentioned above, identified as Cretan (Gilboa et al. 2017: 569–70, table 4).

5 At Al Mina: 2.5YR5/6, 5YR7/4–6, 5YR8/3, 7.5YR7/4–6, 7.5YR6/6–8, 7.5YR8/4, 10YR8/2–3; at Tell Cudeyde/Judeideh (Amuq-Plain, Turkey) 7.5YR7/4, 10YR7/3, 10YR8/2–4; and at Akko 2.5YR6/6–8, 2.5Y7/2–4, 5YR6/6, 5YR7/4, 10YR7/4 (Raban 1993).

6 The colour of the red paint at Al Mina is Munsell 2.5YR4/6–8, 2.5YRS/7, 2.5YR6/8, 10R4/6–8, 10R5/8, and at Cudeyde/Judeideh 5YR4/3, 10R4/2, 10YR4/8.

7 Tel Michal Stratum XI was dated by the excavator to 525–490 BCE (Marchese 1989). A re-examination of the evidence suggests, however, a later date, in the 5th century BCE (Martin 2007: 82–84; Shalev 2014: 64–65).

8 Boardman (1972; 1975; 2006: 522); Fantalkin (2008: 415–16); Lehmann (1996: 235–52). The evidence from Kinet Höyük is not yet published.

9 We do not discuss here the Attic pottery, prevalent at almost every site in the Levant during the Persian period and mostly of bona-fide Athenian manufacture (Nunn (2014); Shefton (2000); Stewart and Martin (2005)).

10 For a general survey of East Greek pottery see, for example, Cook and Dupont (1998).

11 Our NAA study demonstrated that in general, very few fine ware imports of any sort reached the Persian-period Levant from the East Greek region of Ionia. These were mainly imported to Al Mina during the 5th century BCE, especially wavy-line kraters from Miletus in south Ionia (see preliminarily Shalev (2014)).

12 For catalogues of the contexts of their occurrences in the Levant see Lehmann (1996; 2000); Shalev (2014).

13 Attic and Atticizing ceramics occur in the Levant in significant quantities as of the early 5th century BCE, in tandem, as far as stratigraphic resolution can tell, with Kelenderis ware. They are always significantly more varied in terms of shapes and function of vessels (e.g., Stuart and Martin 2005: tables 2–4). Their abundance, easily recognizable ‘classical’ morphology, high quality and generally pretty shiny appearance, always attracted much more scholarly attention than the less alluring BP vessels, both in the Levant (see, for example, Betlyon 2005) and in other Mediterranean regions (Gilboa et al. 2017 for Crete).

14 See for example Blanton (2000). For a recent demonstration that the Bolkardağ mines in the Taurus supplied part of the silver in the Levant in certain periods of the Iron Age, see Eshel et al. (2019).

15 At some sites, notably Dor, occupational hiatus was much longer as they had been abandoned when the Assyrians withdrew in the second-half of the 7th century BCE (Gilboa and Sharon 2016).

16 Such as the export of Greek cookware, e.g., casseroles to the Levant, see provisionally Monnickendam-Givon (2018).

17 Possibly excepting south Lebanon, but the Lebanese case, as mentioned, is unclear.