Ilion and Its Role in Aegean Trade

Thrace through the Ages- https://www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress/Products/9781803274614, 2023

Thrace through the Ages draws attention to the importance of pottery evidence in evaluating archaeological material from Thrace. The volume considers the informative value of pottery in tracing cultural and political phases, by providing us with important data about production centres, commercial relations, daily life, religious rituals and burial customs.

Eva Alram-Stern – Barbara Horejs (Eds.) Pottery Technologies and Sociocultural Connections Between the Aegean and Anatolia During the 3rd Millennium BC, 2018

After several decades of archaeometric investigations on Early Bronze Age pottery, now is the time to bring these manifold results and experts together for a holistic approach of a broader region through socio-cultural interpretations. The archaeometric approach to pottery in the (Greek) Aegean is based on a long tradition and nowadays forms a well-established scientific field in Bronze Age archaeology in that region. Thanks to various research groups and their longterm engagement in developing the methodological and theoretical background – such as the Fitch Laboratory of the British School and the Demokritos lab in Athens, the University of Bonn, and Sheffield University – pottery experts in the Aegean are now able to use various scientific methods based on a well-established scientific framework and comparable data. This state-ofthe-art interdisciplinary approach for Aegean ceramics not only produces a large amount of new and complex data, which are mainly used by specialists in this field, but also leads to a multifaceted picture hardly manageable by non-experts for their socio-cultural follow-up interpretations. Our main aim is focused on combining the archaeometric experts and their scientific questions and data to gain a broader archaeological-cultural contextualisation within one particular time horizon.

Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting , 2018

Pottery Technologies and Sociocultural Connections between the Aegean and Anatolia during the 3rd Millenium BC, 2018

After several decades of archaeometric investigations on Early Bronze Age pottery, now is the time to bring these manifold results and experts together for a holistic approach of a broader region through socio-cultural interpretations. The archaeometric approach to pottery in the (Greek) Aegean is based on a long tradition and nowadays forms a well-established scientific field in Bronze Age archaeology in that region. Thanks to various research groups and their longterm engagement in developing the methodological and theoretical background – such as the Fitch Laboratory of the British School and the Demokritos lab in Athens, the University of Bonn, and Sheffield University – pottery experts in the Aegean are now able to use various scientific methods based on a well-established scientific framework and comparable data. This state-ofthe-art interdisciplinary approach for Aegean ceramics not only produces a large amount of new and complex data, which are mainly used by specialists in this field, but also leads to a multifaceted picture hardly manageable by non-experts for their socio-cultural follow-up interpretations. Our main aim is focused on combining the archaeometric experts and their scientific questions and data to gain a broader archaeological-cultural contextualisation within one particular time horizon.

in Horejs, B.–E. Alram-Stern (eds), Pottery Technologies and Sociocultural Connections between the Aegean and Anatolia during the 3rd Milllennium BC, Conference Vienna, 21-23.10.2015. Wien: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 119-142., 2018

The key position of Samos between the central Aegean and western Anatolia as well as the appraisal of the settlement at Heraion, as being the largest Early Bronze Age (EB) early urban site in the insular eastern Aegean, has led several scholars in the past to suggest that Samos may have constituted the cultural mediator in the transmission of ideas, technological innovations and goods (e.g. new serving and drinking pottery sets) between these regions in the EB II late–III. The period called the ‘Anatolian Trade Network’ in Anatolian terms and ‘Lefkandi I-Kastri Group’ in Helladic-Cycladic terms as well as the related pottery assemblage assigned to this period has recently been revised regarding its chronological, geographical and cultural homogenous character on the basis of newly-emergent data from various Anatolian and Aegean sites. Taking these into account, this paper provides an introduction to the EB strata excavated at Heraion from 1953–2013 focusing on the political, social and economic meaning of architecture from the EB I–III phases. This provides the background for a contextual, chronological and technological re-evaluation of the pottery produced between c. 2650 and 2000 BC, namely within the phases Heraion I–V. The chronological review of the ceramic developments at Heraion and the reconsideration of shapes traditionally considered to be ‘localʼ (eastern Aegean/western Anatolian) and ‘foreign’ (Cycladic/Cycladicising) provide a secure basis for a synchronisation with pottery developments in western Anatolia and the central Aegean in the EB II early–III periods.

Archaeological data show that in the Eastem Mediterranean impressed pottery appears at the end of the Neolithic Period and disappears with the emergence of Halafian elements.Recently it became evident that this type of pottery appeared simultaneously on either side of the Aegean by 6100-6000 BC. As it has been previously noted by Perlès and Özdoğan, there are a number of common traits shared among the early farming communities of the Eastern Mediterranean an the Aegean such as subsistence patterns, some components of the material assemblages and use of specific technologies in daily life. In spite of the lack of data from the southern coastal strip of Turkey, in an overall assessment, it is evident that the simultaneous appearance of impressed pottery in the Eastern Mediterranean -implying the Levant and Northern Syria -and the Aegean was not coincidental.

The landscape of ancient Idalion, Cyprus consists of two acropoleis with a plain between. Sanctuaries top both acropoleis; the mid-level terrace in the east also has a sanctuary while the west temenos has an administrative center. The plain between has a domestic precinct. Clearly, the development of the ancient city put the ‘important’ parts of society on the high points in the landscape near to the dominant feature in the Cypriot landscape, the Troodos Mountains. The sacred areas of Idalion are physically higher and should in fact take priority in the landscape, but a preliminary study of some pottery sherds from Idalion shows that this archaeological culture may not make a clear distinction between sacred and profane contexts. Their daily lives are so intertwined with their religious practice that the pottery used in both contexts is similarly produced. I conducted a petrological analysis of 45 Iron Age samples from the east terrace and the lower city north domestic precinct and determined that the pottery fabrics do not display significant differences between the sacred and domestic wares. Therefore, I argue that material culture is a projection by/of the people and not a projection on them. The relative closeness of the sacred and the everyday seems to indicate cohesion in the social and natural landscape. This preliminary petrological analysis of pottery from Idalion has shown, thus far, that the sacred and profane are in fact intertwined.