Potters' Marks and Potmarks (original) (raw)

The brief remarks and the detailed catalogue presented below, along with the author's forthcoming (a) re-study of the discoveries of the British expedition to Enkomi, supplement and update the author's 2002 study of the marked pottery found at Enkomi. In both cases, it is more a matter of adding, refining, and correcting than significantly changing the observations presented in the earlier paper. But even though they are not headline-grabbing, these contributions are importaqt in that they add to the gradually accumulating evidence for marked vases in circulation in Late Bronze Age Cyprus. Because we cannot (yet) 'read' the marks directly and must still rely on their patterns of occurrence in order to deci pher their meaning(s), each new piece of evidence, or each piece of known evidence now more clearly defined, sharpens the patterns. The catalogue below comprises fifty-three marked vases. Two appear in Dikaios' final report (nos. 2 and 46), ten were included in the tabulations presented in the 2002 study but have not been individually published (nos. 6, 12, 14, 15, 22, 32, 39, 40, 41, 43), and the remaining forty-one are presented here for the first time. This is a substantial addition, when one considers that the 2002 corpus-all the known potmarks found by all the expeditions to Enkomi-numbered approximately 250 vases. The catalogue is organized first by vase type. This is in part to accord with the methodology proposed by Daniel (1941, 252), viz. to classify marks first in terms of the objects on which they occur. And, indeed, it has become clear that there is some correlation between marking systems and vase shapes. This is certainly true, for example, of Red Lustrous wheel-made spindle bottles with their idiosyncratic marks (Hirschfeld, forthcoming). And it is also the case that vases imported from the Aegean are marked differently according to their shapes: large storage containers with incised marks, small containers and open shapes with painted marks (Hirschfeld 2000, 180). But in general this organizing principle should be• regarded only as a tool, a way to grapple with the material until (and in hopes that) classification(s) valid for the ancient function(s) of these marks can be identified. The amphoras, for example, comprise a variety of marking systems-though perhaps a clearer identification of the fabrics or shapes (not easy, when only a handle stub remains) might also reveal some correlation with certain kinds of marks. Contextual information is given when it is known. Thus far it has not been possible to discern any